


Death's Puppeteer

by Elvenheart993



Category: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Fantasy, dark themes, minor gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 63,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6689590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvenheart993/pseuds/Elvenheart993
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being the son of an undertaker, Enoch O'Connor had never been like the other boys growing up in East London at the turn of the century. But he hadn't known exactly how different he really was. Now it's time for his story to be told. May contain minor descriptions of gore and violence. Also posted on fanfiction.net.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1892-1905

** Death’s Puppeteer **

** 1892-1905 **

****

Enoch O’Connor liked death. Not in such a sadistic way that he enjoyed watching people actually die, or a stray dog run over in the street, certainly not, but it was the process afterwards that interested him. The science of embalming a body with special fluids, and on occasion spices, to prevent it stinking and how fast it would decompose when kept cool became a fascination for him in his youth. It was perhaps an odd, and thoroughly morbid, hobby for a young boy growing up in East London to have, for the most part explained by being the son of an undertaker. The O’Connor men had been in the undertaking trade for almost five decades since the mid-19th century when Enoch’s grandfather, Ambrose O’Connor, had doubled as a carpenter. Upon his death in 1884 the trade was passed down to his sons, Owen and Uriah and would in turn almost certainly be passed to Enoch in due time.

Enoch was born in the years approaching the turn of the century in December 1892 to Owen and Valentine O’Connor in the East end of London. Valentine O’Connor was a pretty woman of thirty whose blonde hair was constantly blackened like many of the buildings with the smog of factories. Aside from her husband’s employment as an undertaker, whose earnings were split with his brother in the business, Valentine worked as a washer woman taking in laundry for a pittance. The family were far from the worst off of the working class, and managed well enough to get by in daily life without wanting desperately for much with the income they earned.

From as young as six years old, Enoch considered himself different from the other boys his own age. He was never interested in the cricket bats and balls they ran around with in the yard and the streets. Instead, he spent his time out of class sitting cross legged on the hard pavement by himself as he impassively watched the games around him. He would barely pay attention to learning Latin, which frequently resulted in a caning before the rest of the class, but from observing his father’s trade, could recite the proper amount of formaldehyde to use when embalming the body of a grown man.

By the age of ten, in 1902, Enoch was accompanying his father and his uncle in a hired horse drawn cart to help attend to and collect the dead from houses along the winding and busy streets of East London. He stood a step behind his father as the two undertakers removed their tall, albeit slightly kinked, hats and knocked on the doors of the grieving family’s small home. The door was answered by a woman with tears lining her face and a handkerchief pressed to her mouth.  
Owen O’Connor dipped his head, holding his hat over his chest and spoke in a thick Cockney accent, “Terribly sorry for your loss, M’am.”   
The woman choked out a reply and stepped aside to usher them in. Enoch made to follow his father who promptly placed a hand on his shoulder and addressed the grieving widow again. “My son is ‘ere to learn, if you won’t object.”  
Without so much as a reply, they were admitted entry into the parlour of the house where the body of an old man was spread out upon a too small table, his legs dangling over the edge at the knees. At the edge of the room sat a young girl with mousey brown curls who barely looked older than Enoch. As soon as the undertakers, with their black coats and bags entered the room, she burst into tears and rushed from the room, brushing Enoch’s shoulder as she did so. The boy just scoffed and moved to stand where she had been, giving his father and uncle ample room to attend the body.

xxxXxxx

1905 was the year Enoch O’Connor, son of an undertaker, began to realise just how different he really was.

He brushed a hand through his dark curls which were beginning to hang limp over his forehead, sticking there with the sweat that coated his face, and replaced his grey cap on his head as he leaned against the shovel he held in his right hand. This had to be the least enjoyable, and certainly the most tedious, part of the job, Enoch thought as he began mumble several choice words under his breath.  
“ ‘ow’s it goin’ down there, lad?” A laughing voice interrupted the thoughts going through the twelve year old’s mind and he looked up six feet into the equally dusty face of Uncle Uriah.  
“Faster if you’d ‘elp again.” Enoch retorted, his lips not even twitching in response to his Uncle’s good humour, which was perhaps unusual in his profession.  
“Reckon you’re done now, anyways. ‘Ere…” Uriah held down an arm and Enoch obediently passed up the shovel first before reaching his own arm up and jumping to be able to grab onto his uncle’s hand. Bracing his feet on the sides of the freshly dug grave, and with Uriah’s help to pull him up, Enoch scrambled back onto flat ground. Not bothering to brush off his filthy clothes, he staggered to his feet and looked down at what had mostly been his handiwork. Other boys raced each other through the streets after school, Enoch dug graves.

Uriah clapped his hand on his nephew’s shoulder and turned him around, carrying the shovel on his own shoulder as they marched towards the gates of the cemetery. “Fine job, Enoch, I know it ain’t clean all ‘e time but we gotta do it, eh? Just fink, soon as you’re done in school, you can be a proper apprentice.”

“And do all your dirty work?” Enoch replied dryly, tucking his hands into his pockets as their feet left the soggy grass of the church ground and back onto the hard cobblestones of London’s streets. He didn’t mind it all really, the rest of the job quite appealed to him already. He knew it, he understood it, which was a lot more than he could say for Latin and general mathematics. Aside from the manual labour of grave digging, there was a certain morbid charm to the science of preserving bodies.  
His uncle just chuckled and dropped his hand from Enoch’s shoulder as they walked in silence. They’d barely gone another minute along the road before the dark skies began to drizzle a soft sheet of rain down upon them. Enoch turned up the collar of his old coat and adjusted his braces back over his shoulders where he’d been letting them hang at his sides as he dug.  
Another minute or so of silence between them passed before they reached another fork in the roads. Uriah took the road to the left, waving over his shoulder at Enoch as the twelve year old boy rounded the corner to the right.  
As soon as he was left alone, Enoch darted into a side alley he knew well as a shortcut to his home. He enjoyed being on his own, and he didn’t have any friends to run around with anyway. Not many kids wanted to be friends with the boy whose father had carted off their dead family members and who spent more of his time around dead bodies than live ones.  
Splashing through a puddle of stagnant water and probably urine in the middle of the path between two soot blackened buildings, Enoch cursed and shook his foot before grumbling and hurrying his way. He’d only gone a few steps when he tripped over something and barely had time to throw out his hands and catch himself.  
“Stupid…” He pushed himself up and rubbed his knee where it had smacked hard onto the stones. Looking down to find what he had tripped over in the dark, Enoch squinted to see and bent down to pick up a twisted shape at his feet. He’d slipped on a child’s toy. Looking up he saw what must have happened. Above his head a window was open on the second floor of an old brick building, the torn curtains flapping in the wind that was picking up with the rain. Some careless child had obviously dropped it. Turning the wood and fabric over in his hands he was greeted with a poorly painted face and hair. It was a doll, dressed in a plain strip of fabric he supposed was meant to be a dress. One of its legs had broken off and been lost somewhere in the alley and the joints of its arms were bent out of place. The thought that there might have been a child missing their toy inside the house crossed Enoch’s mind only briefly before he stuffed the doll inside his coat and started to trudge away in the rain. “Serves ‘em right for dropping it.” He muttered to himself.

 

By the time he got home, the fire was roaring in the hearth and there were bowls of somewhat watery stew ready on the kitchen table. He slipped inside, trying to avoid catching the attention of his parents until he could smuggle the stolen doll to his bedroom. Unfortunately for Enoch, try as he did, he couldn’t smother the squeak of the door hinges, or the loud creaking of old floorboards.  
“Enoch!”  
He groaned and turned his back, holding his coat tightly to his chest and dripping onto the floor as his mother looked up from where she had been draping the last of a load of their neighbours laundry in front of the fire.  
“There you are! ‘urry up and get out of those fings, your dinner’s getting’ cold.”

Relieved that he hadn’t invited any questions, Enoch just nodded and hurried towards his room, only to run right into his father’s chest and promptly jumping back.  
Owen O’Connor raised an eyebrow and took in his son’s soaking wet appearance. That in itself wasn’t unusual, but Enoch knew his eyes had already gone to the lump in his coat.  
“What’ve you got th-”

“Nofin…” Enoch quickly interrupted, bowing his head and quickly dashing into his room, collapsing against the door with a sigh of relief.

Immediately he tossed the doll onto his bed as quickly as if it was burning him. He was definitely being silly, it was only a stupid broken toy from an alley, it wasn’t as if he’d swiped anything of value. He’d barely swiped it at all really. Thinking better of it, he picked it up again, pushed his bed a few inches to the side and knelt down to pry up a broken floorboard. Hiding the toy in there, Enoch quickly pulled his bed back and stripped off his wet clothes in exchange for a dry pair of trousers and loose fitting shirt.  
By the time he changed into nightclothes and crawled into bed that night, he had completely forgotten about the broken doll beneath his floorboards.

 xxxXxxx

Weeks passed before Enoch even thought about the doll again and it was purely by chance that he did. As it happened, the toy maker who owned a corner shop had suffered a heart attack in his shop and the undertaker summoned to take away the body was O’Connor.  
Enoch wouldn’t have been aware of it had he not been walking that way from school at just the moment a makeshift and temporary coffin was carried out of the shop to be loaded into the back of the black cart. Enoch moved closer curiously, ducking in through the open front door while the shop assistant at the time was occupied assisting with the coffin.  
He hadn’t ever cared to go into the toy shop before, he hadn’t really even had any toys of his own nor had he been interested in them. Wooden dolls and planes lined the walls, stuffed teddy bears with large glass eyes were piled together and in a corner was a stack of unassembled kites. Balls and bats and boats and all manner of toys filled the shelves along with, which strangely seemed to draw Enoch’s eye, hard lumps of cheap clay.  
The child was just reaching for one when someone cleared their throat behind him and he jumped violently, his heart thundering in his chest as if he’d been caught doing something terrible.  
“Can I help you, young man?”

Enoch spun on the spot to face the shop assistant. He was a squat man with a pencil thin moustache and ginger sideburns peeking out below the rim of his bowler hat. The boy opened and closed his mouth a few times before the man spoke again. “I’m afraid we’re closed right now, lad. Off you go.”

“Closed?” Enoch repeated a little stupidly.

“Closed. Best come back later on, son.”

“But what if-”

“You wanna spend ye pocket money, you come back a little later. Sorry, boy.” The man said firmly, taking Enoch by the shoulder and starting to march him towards the door.

Enoch couldn’t really explain to himself what possessed him to do what he did next. Sticking out a foot and pretending to stumble, he pushed himself sideways into the older man’s side and sent them both into the stand of teddy bears. Both it, and the shop assistant went down and in the confusion Enoch rushed back the few steps, seized a lump of clay and stuffed it into the pocket of his school shorts. Picking up his school books again he ran to hold out a hand to the man who was just starting to get his bearings again.  
Apologising profusely, but not genuinely, Enoch tried to heave the large man to his feet, almost falling down himself in the process and flashed the most sheepish expression he could muster. “Sorry…awful clumsy, tripped…I’m sorry!”

He could have fashioned his own clay with ease from brick dust, mud and water, it seemed too ridiculous to think of a reason why he’d stolen some. It wasn’t even expensive in the first place. Enoch felt a twinge of guilt as he started to trudge home as quickly as he could. If he hurried, he would beat his father in the wagon and his mother would still be delivering her loads of finished laundry.  
Stopping only to take a bowl of water from the kitchen, Enoch went right to his room. Closing the door behind him he tossed his books onto the bed, set the bowl on the floor and pushed his bed aside. As he reached for the floorboard to pry it up again, he felt a strange sort of tug that momentarily made him freeze. It was a strange feeling, as though he were being pulled from within himself to do what he was about to do. Immediately he tried to shake it off, pried up the floorboard and took out the doll he had forgotten was there for weeks.  
Now he looked at it, it seemed an even sorrier sight than it had in the alley. The arms were bent at right angles and its one leg was scuffed and chipped in places. Ripping off the torn piece of grey fabric that clothed it, he examined the damage more closely. The right leg had broken off and splintered where the knee joint should have been. Gingerly he started to twist the arms back into place, rolling them in their little wooden sockets until they moved once again as they should have.

Pulling the bowl of water closer to him, Enoch shifted and pulled the clay out of his pocket. It was hard almost as brick, but with enough force he could compress it the tiniest bit. He dropped the whole lump into the water and waited half a minute before reaching in and starting to squeeze it until the clay had become mouldable in his hand.  
He ripped off a small chunk and left the rest of the lump to the side. Rolling the clay in his hands, he frowned and bent it into shape until it somewhat resembled the doll’s remaining stick leg. He just had to hope it was still sticky enough. Picking up the doll, Enoch pressed the makeshift leg to the broken knee joint and tried to mould any excess clay over it until he could safely move his hand without it falling.

Enoch couldn’t help it; he laughed and grinned at his achievement, small though it was. When the clay dried the doll would have a new, relatively sturdy leg. As quickly as it came, his smile turned into a frown of confusion.  
“Now what’d I do that for anyway?” Sighing, he overturned the bowl of water and tossed the now more or less repaired doll back into its hiding place in the floor.

xxxXxxx

Enoch woke that night in a cold sweat. His dreams had been plagued by nightmares and he felt a feverish heat all over his body as he sat bolt upright in his bed. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he scooted to the edge and planted his feet on the cold floor. His head was swimming and cloudy, and he wasn’t completely sure he was awake as he stood up and pulled a coat on over his nightclothes. It was as if he was still dreaming, like he wasn’t quite in control of his body as he slipped into his boots and he felt the strange tug in his gut that he’d felt fixing the doll. Enoch let it pull him, guide his feet which were tingling peculiarly, through the house and towards the front door. Careful not to make much noise, not that he was sure he could have pulled himself back, he slipped outside into the bitter chill of the dead of night. He didn’t go far, only to the next door over which lead into the caretaker’s parlour. It was locked, of course, but Enoch pulled a key from his pocket (when had he taken it?) and unlocked the door quickly, admitting himself.

The building held a strange warmth and familiarity for Enoch, despite how cold it was kept. Various sizes of sample coffins lined the rear wall made of oak and elm and the simple plywood. An immense industrial cool box occupied a whole corner of the shop, although it was cold enough in the winter that there was little use for it. Beside this was a locked cabinet that Enoch knew contained a various bottles of poisons and ointments, and a large supply of formaldehyde under lock and key. But it was the long, heavy table in the centre of the room, or rather what was upon it, which drew Enoch’s eye.  
Laid out upon the table was the half-naked body of a man in his fifties, the toy maker who had died that same day. He smelt strongly of formaldehyde as Enoch walked impassively up to the body. His face betrayed no emotion, he had long since accustomed himself to the sight of death. He hadn’t even noticed he’d stretched out one hand that now hovered in the air over the dead man’s chest, until he felt another peculiar tug in his gut. Immediately he snapped out of the half conscious daze he had been in since waking and pulled his hand back. He had almost felt like he’d felt something jerk inside the toymaker. It was impossible and he knew it, the man was very much dead and he hadn’t even been touching him.  
Enoch shuddered involuntarily and tucked his hands firmly back into his pockets as he turned to leave. Something squeaked and he jumped as a rat scuttled over his foot, its worm like tail brushing his bare ankle. The boy grimaced as it scuttled away into a dark corner and very slowly lifted his foot to remove his boot. He edged closer to the rodent as quickly as he dared and poised to strike.  Holding the position a moment longer he hurled the heavy boot at the rat as it bustled around, sniffing at the walls. It struck and with a loud squeak the rat weakly tried to scamper away. Enoch seized it with both hands and struck its head hard against the edge of the table. The rodent went limp in his hands and he stared half in amazement and half in disgust at what he’d heartlessly done. The regret didn’t last longer than a moment, the rats that roamed the gutters and streets of London were disease ridden, disgusting creatures and he really shouldn’t have touched it at all. Yet, he was undeterred by the potential for disease and, for some reason he couldn’t quite explain to himself, put the dead rodent into his pocket.


	2. 1905

** 1905 **

Enoch quietly removed his boots as he returned to his room, returning the key to his father’s workshop that he still couldn’t remember taking for himself. Keeping his coat on he sat cross legged on the floor beside his bed and withdrew the dead rat from within his coat, laying it on the floor in front of him. From his other pocket Enoch drew a scalpel he’d swiped from the workshop before leaving. It was a strange type of curiosity, the sudden desire to dissect a dead rat, and not one that he imagined most boys did in their spare time.   
He turned the thin instrument over in his fingers and looked at it with a strange fascination. He could feel in his fingers the same tingling that had been in his feet just minutes ago, as if they were guided by something out of his complete control. Some unseen force was pulling his hand towards the rat that lay dead on his bedroom floor and the closer it came, the stronger the feeling grew until in one neat swipe, he had carefully sliced a line right down the rat’s stomach.

His heart thundered against his ribs as the twelve year old dropped the scalpel like it had burned him, his finger hovering right over the tiny lifeless body in front of him. He stayed perfectly still, frozen in position, and then he felt it. The same sharp jerk he had felt in his hand as it stretched out over the dead man downstairs.  It was as though something was trying to leap right out of the rat towards him. After a moment he did something he couldn’t have explained if he tried. Enoch plunged his fingers inside the rat, twisting and pulling at something within until he drew from it a tiny, motionless heart between his thumb and forefinger.   
He held it up to his eye, his mouth slightly agape as he examined the gory sight while blood dripped down his hand. Perhaps there was something wrong with him, normal boys didn’t do this did they? Not that he had ever considered himself the same as the boys who played sport and tossed things at each other in school. Even as he thought it, a tremor which he couldn’t supress started in his own chest and ran through his arm, his hand, his fingers and into the organ between them. It was as though the wind had been knocked out of him and he groaned suddenly. He was cut short by sudden movement in his fingers. The rat’s heart, that had been still and lifeless a moment ago, was pulsing ever so slightly.

Momentarily forgetting the need to be quiet, Enoch suddenly kicked aside his bed and all but pounced on the floor to claw up the loose floorboard. In a few moments he had retrieved the doll and the lump of clay, still holding the heart in his right hand. The clay had hardened again but with some effort, Enoch was able to pry off a small piece which, acting on an instinct he never knew he had, he wrapped around the heart gingerly and pressed to the wooden block that was the body of the doll.

Nothing happened. What had he expected to happen? That the doll would magically turn into some animal and start breathing or walking around? It was a hunk of chipped wood and clay with a painted face, inanimate and uninteresting. And yet…the heart had started beating at his touch hadn’t it? Enoch scoffed and threw the toy to the floor with a dull thud, turning his attention to the blood on his hands and the dead rat on the floor. He thought for a moment before picking it up by its tail and carrying it over to his window which he opened with an elbow and tossed the rodent to the muddy ground below.  He had just closed his window again when a soft knock from behind him made him turn around. The boy swallowed and stared, turning his head a little quizzically as the wooden toy jerked on the floor, its clay leg rising and falling and one arm waving in its joint.

Enoch closed his eyes tightly and opened them again, trying to convince himself that everything that night had really been a dream. But as his blue eyes focused again on the toy he was sure he could see the lump of clay hiding the heart moving on its little wooden chest. Somewhat hesitantly he knelt down beside it and reached out to pick up the doll. Immediately its legs started to kick in the air and its wooden head began to turn bizarrely until its painted face was staring right back at Enoch whose jaw had dropped.   
“What are you?” He muttered, as if he actually expected the painted mouth to open and speak. Slowly he set it down on its very unpronounced feet. The figure swayed and started to totter on unsteady, uneven legs around Enoch’s bed as the owner of which fell backwards onto the floor in shock.

Footsteps sounded outside the door and Enoch had only a second to throw himself upon the walking doll before the door opened and his father stepped into the room, holding a lantern in his hand and looking bleary eyes. He stared a little bewildered at the sight of his son lying flat on the floor in a coat and nightclothes with his hands pressed beneath him and staring right back up at him.

“Enoch, what’s all the noi-what’re you doin’?”

Enoch’s mouth opened and closed voicelessly, unable to find any words to explain the situation. After a moment he gave up and just scowled at his father, hoping desperately that the wriggling figure pinned beneath his stomach was not visible.

“Get to bed, lad. Early rise…and take that coat off…” Owen backed out of the room, pausing to look suspiciously at his son as if expecting him to burst out of the room and run off.

Enoch sighed as the door closed and rolled to the side. The wooden figure’s struggling had stopped and it now lay limp and still on the floor. He picked it up and shook it before placing it back down on its feet. It toppled over immediately and the lump of clay fell from its chest and rolled to Enoch’s hand. Cracking it open he pulled the tiny heart from within which now lay motionless and greying in his palm. Dead.

xxxXxxx

At first, Enoch tried to pretend it hadn’t happened at all, that it had all been some strange dream and really it was impossible to make a toy walk around with a dead heart. He even threw the doll out of his own window where it cracked on the pavement and was taken away by a skinny, stray dog. The strange tingling sensations went away and he no longer felt a strange pull in his gut. Instead he went back to helping his father carrying coffins and embalming bodies in his time after school, and weeks turned into months without the peculiar pull returning.

In October of 1905, his baby sister, twelve and a half years his junior, was born. She was tiny, with a head of fair blonde hair and squirming arms and legs that strangely unnerved Enoch more than spending time in any mortuary would have done. They named her Faith.

  
Enoch wanted to leave school. At twelve years old he could legally leave school, not that it was a well enforced law amongst the working class whose children were forced into fulltime work in factories at early ages. He had made no friends in the class of forty boys he shared a schoolroom with, despite his mother’s hopes that he would, and he struggled with the drummed in repetition of times tables and spelling because he simply did not care. None of this was missed by the rich, meaner boys his age who had the faces of cherubs when the schoolmaster was around, his birch twitch in hand as he kept an eye out for troublemakers. As soon as he looked away they would throw books and trip the smaller kids and pick on anyone they thought were easy meat. Enoch, with his disdain for social activity and strange hobby of assisting with funerals and digging bodies, was considered one of these. Rarely did he respond with more than a sour face and a shrug of his shoulders. If he pushed back it would only earn him three more strikes with the switch across his hand.

“Ho-mun-cu-lus.” Their teacher, a tall middle aged man with an impeccably trimmed beard and neat suit recited from the head of his classroom. He struck the blackboard to punctuate each syllable of the Latin word. “Repeat.”

With one, well-rehearsed voice, forty boys echoed the word from their desks. “Homunculus.”

“Good.” Mr Allchurch nodded approvingly before pointing his switch directly at Enoch who was hunched over his desk looking bored. “O’Connor. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know, sir.” He replied and wisely sat up straighter in his chair when his teacher raised a bushy brown eyebrow at him.

“Little man. A homunculus is a small representation of a human being.” Allchurch answered, turning away at just the right moment to miss a blonde, chubby boy throwing a piece of chalk across the aisle at a younger boy who turned in his chair and glared at his offender.

Enoch rolled his eyes and adjusted the sleeve of his school jacket until he caught the attention of the boy seated beside him who cleared his throat and grinned at Enoch. Enoch didn’t as much as blink at him until the boy began to mime opening his desk and pointed at Enoch’s.

Suspiciously, Enoch frowned and started to lift the wooden cover of his desk as soon as he was sure the teacher couldn’t see. Immediately a great green frog leapt from it, causing him to shout in surprise as it hopped into his chest and started to crawl over his shoulder, ribbiting indignantly.

The class erupted into laughter, and Enoch felt his face grow hot as the same boy beside him raised his hand and called out loudly. “Sir! O’Connor brought a pet to class!”

“I didn-” Enoch started to retort, rising from his chair, his cheeks burning a violent shade of red  before the loud crack of a twitch against wood silenced the class and Allchurch shouted over them.

“Enough, enough! Mr. O’Connor, that’s disgraceful behaviour unbefitting a school grounds!”

Enoch’s jaw dropped and he didn’t think twice before arguing, which would likely only result in a more severe punishment. “It wasn’t m-!”

“Do you think me a fool?!” Allchurch roared and gestured to the front of the classroom beside his own desk. “Now.”

The rest of the class snickered as Enoch dragged his feet to the front of the classroom, his fists shaking at his sides as he faced the desk, he knew exactly what was coming.  
Mr. Allchurch drew himself up to his full, and intimidating, height and walked around his desk with his switch raised to deliver a ‘suitable punishment’.

xxxXxxx

“Not goin’ back.” Enoch snapped as soon as the front door slammed behind him, causing his mother to jump and drop a bar of soap into the large tub of warm water in front of her.   
“Enoch!” She gasped, wiping her soaking arm off on a towel and casting a glance towards the fireplace where the baby was sleeping in a small wooden cot.

“I’m twelve, ain’t I?  I don’t ‘ave to anymore. You can’t make me. I’ll be a proper apprentice now.”

Valentine dried her hands on her apron and pursed her lips as she watched her son limp stubbornly towards his room, leaving his pencil box and school books on the floor carelessly. He grew more short tempered each day now, sneering and grumbling when he was forced into uniform and sent off to school in the morning. Maybe it would be best for him to work. Especially with a new mouth to feed in the house.

In his room, Enoch slammed the door behind him and sat down on his bed only to groan and stand up again, rubbing his backside where he was sure the welts had already begun to bruise. Sometimes he was sure he might as well be invisible for all the teachers and the head master would listen to him. London ran on money. If your family had it, you were nigh untouchable, which explained the pretentious, wealthy boys who found it fun to make others suffer. It didn’t matter now. He refused to go back through those gates and if his parents insisted otherwise, he’d retort that he already had more education than his father had and look how well he’d turned out. Whoever needed Latin anyway?

Something stirred in his mind and Enoch paused mid step with one foot hovering an inch above the floorboards. Latin. What was the word he was trying to remember? It was tugging at the corners of his mind and the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t catch it. Maybe he’d been hit so hard it had affected his memory. He scoffed at the thought and moved over to his window.

A cat screeched somewhere as Enoch opened his window and leaned out over the windowsill.  Lines of washing hung to dry stretched between windows, though he sometimes wondered how anything ever completely dried outside. On the street below a few horse drawn wagons passed, the hooves clipping rhythmically on the cobblestones as they pulled their heavy load of bricks and clay through town. Clay. That was it. Enoch quickly pulled himself back inside and dropped to his knees beside his bed. He pushed it aside with his shoulder and once again pried up the loose board.   
Homunculus. That was the word he’d been thinking of. Little man.   
Withdrawing the lump of solid clay that was almost brick itself now, Enoch smiled to himself. What if it hadn’t been a dream at all?

With a great deal of pushing, prying, and soaking it in water, the clay was eventually usable again, even if he had had to resort to smashing it into smaller pieces. Enoch left his room only to eat when he was called. It was a miserable meal of overcooked, chalky sausages and watery potatoes which Enoch did not think twice of when, to his immense relief, his father did not fight hard to stop him leaving school. On the contrary, Owen O’Connor seemed pleased with his son.  
“It’ll be ‘andy to be able to properly train you up now. It’s your business one day, y’know?”

As soon as he could be excused, Enoch returned to his room and set to work. He twisted and rolled the clay around in his hands where it stuck to his skin in clumps and dust as he tried to fashion a thin, humanoid torso. To this he attached crude legs and arms and a rounded ball of clay for a head, pressing each piece until it stuck to the rest. It was a very simple, crude creation which stood barely taller than Enoch’s own hand. He felt a little silly making a child’s toy at almost thirteen years old as he sat back on his ankles and observed his handiwork. It had been months since his peculiar experience with the broken doll but he had been struck by the almost irrepressible urge to see if the impossible could happen again.

xxxXxxx

The pigeon flapped helplessly with one wing, its other, broken one dragged uselessly along the cobbled road behind it. It cooed and warbled anxiously as it wandered around in the middle of a busy road, barely missing the hard hooves of horses and the busy feet of passer-by’s until a boy in a black coat leapt from the seat of a wagon, bent down with gloved hands and picked it up.

Enoch had only a few seconds when he jumped from the funeral wagon, to pick up the injured pigeon, quietly snap its neck and stow it carefully inside his jacket where it wouldn’t fall. He told himself it wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway, and that really he was doing the foul bird a kindness. His uncle, driving the wagon, dipped his hat to Enoch as soon as he regathered the reins and drove off. Letting out a breath, Enoch hurried across the road to the front door and let himself in, removing his cap as he entered and not even bothering to see if his mother was home at all as he ran directly to his room.  
He was caught by a strange sense of morbid excitement as he laid the dead pigeon on the floor of his bedroom beside his clay man. All at once, months of trying to pretend something had never happened just vanished into nothing.  By all terms of logic it shouldn’t have happened, it was impossible for a dead heart to beat again and more impossible for an inanimate object to suddenly come to life like a marionette dancing on strings. All the same, Enoch wanted to try, and more than that…he wanted it to work.   
Retrieving the scalpel, which he had never returned to the undertaker’s parlour, from the floorboards, he didn’t hesitate to slice a neat line down the centre of the bird. It was like pickling an organ and he’d watched his father perform far more gruesome procedures and didn’t bat an eyelid.

Reaching inside the small, feathered body, he immediately wrinkled his nose. It wasn’t the process, or even the disgusting texture that bothered him, but the smell that struck his nose with a vengeance. Carefully he used the scalpel to sever the thin, bloody ligaments and muscle that surrounded the heart and pulled it free. It was larger than a rat’s as he held it between a thumb and forefinger and examined it with all the air of an orthodontist examining a tooth, and as still and lifeless as the clay doll at Enoch’s foot.  
Now if only he could explain and repeat how he had made a dead heart beat again.   
Closing his eyes tightly, he pressed ever so slightly on the organ with both fingers and tried to imagine it beating in his fingers. His blue eyes snapped open with a sudden excitement that deflated immediately when nothing had happened. His shoulders slumped and he pursed his lips. He was missing something, he was sure of it. Or maybe it really hadn’t been real after all. No. It had. The boy was sure of it, so he closed his eyes again and tried to remember.  It came back in a flood, and he remembered the peculiar twisting in his body he’d felt as he stretched his hand out over the dead man and the dead rat. It wasn’t something he’d thought of at all, it was something he’d felt. When he’d held the rat’s heart out in his hands it was as if something inside him was making a connection with it. A connection that had expelled itself in a tremor that begun from his own chest.   
Feel it.   
Enoch took a deep breath and tightened his fingers around the tiny organ and tried to solely focus on the feeling of holding it in his fingers. Like he was memorising every tiny little ventricle and identifying each bump and smooth surface with his fingertips.   
And then it happened.  
In a burst of energy that left him breathless, a harsh tremor erupted from his chest and travelled through his outstretched arm. It escaped at his fingertips and after a moment of wide eyed staring, the little heart began to throb, expelling drops of blood over Enoch’s hand.

Momentarily stunned into silence and unable to move his limbs, Enoch just stared, his jaw dropped and his eyes wider than ever. In a second he snapped out of it, seized the clay man with little care and cracked open its chest. None too gently he forced the still beating heart inside, with some difficulty given it’s slightly too large size. Within moments, the figure began to feebly twitch and jerk in Enoch’s hand causing him to drop it to the floor where it writhed and struggled to sit itself up.

Enoch laughed and fell backwards onto the floor from where he had perched on his knees. His eyes remained glued to the little clay man that was now picking itself up off the floor and tottering towards him. He had done it. He, Enoch O’Connor, had made that strange, humanoid creature and given it life. It should have been impossible and yet the proof was pulling at his trouser leg and waving a little clay arm up at him.

Slowly, Enoch lowered his legs until he was sitting cross legged on the floor and, with a look of entranced curiosity, held out his hand, palm up on the floor. After a few seconds, the clay man swivelled its head up to Enoch and hopped right onto his hand. It was surreal. He was sure at any moment that it would keel over and fall lifeless again but the heart, which he could still see through cracks in poorly compressed clay, appeared as strong as it would have been inside the bird.   
“Homunculus.” He murmured to himself, lifting the figure level with his face as a smile started to twist across his lips. Why would he need friends now he could make his own?

“Enoch!”

Enoch jumped up, tossing his newly animated doll to his bed where it rolled and tripped over itself trying to stand on the softer surface. The boy hurried to the door, threw it open and rushed out onto the landing, hoping to answer his mother before she’d knock on his door.   
“Yes?”

“I need you to get these…” Valentine called up, holding up a scrap of paper in one hand and cradling a sobbing Faith in the other. Her hair was bedraggled and a little damp, and she looked more exhausted than ever. Enoch could hardly think of a reason to argue, though the last thing he wanted to do was his mother’s shopping.

She seemed to take his silence as argument enough and sighed, shifting the baby up over her shoulder and gesturing for Enoch to hurry up. “Enoch, really? Just some eggs and vegetables… or ye can nurse yer sister. Hurry up now.”

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’.” Enoch said quickly before disappearing into his room again. He shed his black funeral coat, which was already verging on too small for him, and pulled his braces back over his shoulders. Retrieving a plain coat, he pulled on his grey cap, slightly patched in places. Looking over at the bed he darted over just in time to catch his clay figure as it stepped right off the mattress. “Got an ‘eart but no brain, eh?” He mumbled and, after a moment’s thought, slipped it into his pocket.

xxxXxxx

“Come on! Out of the way then!” A familiar voice made Enoch glance up as four eggs were placed inside the basket he carried hanging at his side. Occasionally, when his pocket would suddenly start moving, he’d nudge it with the basket to hide what was within.  
 Even through the dozens of people milling around the outdoor market, he could place the boy that had shouted as easily as if the street had been empty. A red headed boy in a well-tailored suit, and companion, a pudgy blonde boy with the face of a pig were elbowing their way through a crowd of smaller children clamouring around a man selling tin soldiers.  
The red head’s name was Spencer, and had been one of Enoch’s tormentors before he dropped out of school. He strongly suspected it had been his idea to put a frog in his desk.   
A hand was stuck out under his nose and Enoch started before handing over a few coins and nodding his thanks.

“I want that one!” Spencer had shouted again, this time snatching a solider in a painted green uniform right out of a small boy’s hand who started to cry. If the peddler noticed the behaviour in front of him, he gave no indication of it at all and Enoch glowered through the crowd at the scene.   
He was shunted to and fro through the crowd as he made his way closer. Moving onto the curb, and trying to keep out of a direct line of sight, Enoch knelt down on the hard stone under the guise of tying his boot. Slowly, so as not to draw attention to himself, he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the little clay figure, which was still just as animated and lively as it had been half an hour ago. It wriggled in his hand and hopped to the pavement as he held it out.   
“Fight, whatever you are…”  
As if it had known exactly what Enoch was thinking, the moment he released it, it ran unnoticed through the crowd, weaving in and out of legs and avoiding feet until it came close to the children.  Much to Enoch’s amazement, and amusement, it promptly latched itself onto Spencer’s ankle, kicking its tiny clay legs and beating its arms against the offender who leapt and shrieked as if something had burned in.   
Shouting profanities, he tried to shake off the unusual assailant, to little avail, until with a great thud and a squelch, he toppled over sideways, caught his friend by the arm and dragged them both into a great puddle of muck at the side of the road.


	3. 1907

** 1907 **

By the time he was fourteen, Enoch was shooting upwards. He stood quite tall for his age, his shoulders, though skinny, were strong from carrying corpses and coffins so frequently. His hair was growing out and dark curls tickled the back of his neck. Physically, he seemed like any of the other boys around the town, most of whom looked older than they were from factory and apprenticeships at young ages. There was nothing distinctive in Enoch’s appearance to outwardly display his difference from the rest. At least, at first there hadn’t been. He had had over a year to hone and practice his new found talent, as he liked to think of it, but the extent of what was slowly changing in him had far from been reached.

For over a year, he had kept his peculiar habit of collecting dead animals and manufacturing little clay soldiers with their hearts, a closely hidden secret. Inanimate and still, the clay figures lived beneath his floorboard until he saw fit to bring them to life. He found, quite accidentally, that he did not have to remove the heart to send them back into a lifeless pile of clay. With a little press to the chest, the figure would go limp and, if it hadn’t been too long, with another press life was restored to the heart.

Any time he was not working as an apprentice to his father, and Uncle Uriah, he devoted to determining which animal’s hearts were the strongest for his use. After much experimentation by candlelight in the undertaker’s parlour, he found mouse hearts the most useful for smaller ‘homunculi’.    
The homunculi he made were, albeit a little strangely, the closest things Enoch had ever had to friends. They kept him company and amused him running around his room and trying to climb things, he could make them do whatever he wanted them to. Once one of the stupider ones had toppled right out of his open bedroom window in the middle of the night and shattered in pieces on the ground below.   
Sometimes Enoch scratched simple faces into their clay heads, and even named the more useful ones. Chester had been his favourite. Once, when he’d had four at a time after managing to catch and kill several mice running around the house, he’d lined them up two against two and watched them wrestle and fight each other. By the end of the strange brawl, only one was left with all four of his limbs. So he had graced the clay man with a name, Chester.

Faith O’Connor was one of the few living souls that brought a genuine smile to Enoch’s face, when she wasn’t screaming and crying at least. Approaching two years old she was not yet talking but the light in her bright blue eyes and the happiness in her smile when she laughed could not help but touch his heart. He loved his sister and, despite his generally cold and dismissive manner, did not always mind having to watch her in the house on infrequent occasions. 

xxxXxxx

Enoch kicked a stray pebble as he wandered down the street, barely paying attention to where he was walking. It was a pleasantly nice day, the sun having cracked its way through the clouds at last and all around him families were taking advantage of the good weather. Girls in white dresses and boys in fine shirts and flat straw hats ran about the streets, tugging at the hands of parents or nannies.  Enoch had unbuttoned the top of his own shirt and stuffed his cap into his pocket to enjoy the warmth of the sun on his head, so infrequent it was. In his other pocket a little clay figure the size of his palm kept trying to pull itself out of its cloth confinement. Blindly, he felt for it and pushed it back down with his thumb. He cut left at a crossroads and turned into a narrow back alley between two rows of buildings.   
The smell hit him before the sight. Cast in shadow, up against the western wall were the bodies of two very limp and lifeless cats. Both were so skinny that even from a distance Enoch could see their ribs protruding from mangy tabby fur. He took a few steps towards them and as he did, the few rats picking at the corpses scattered. They had clearly been dead for some time, Enoch actually gagged at the smell and lifted the collar of his shirt to cover his nose. Despite the obvious deterrence, he crouched down and prodded one with the tip of his boot. He’d never tried to use cat hearts before…maybe he could make larger homunculus with them. At the very least, he could experiment.   
The clay man wriggled in his pocket again but this time Enoch ignored it even as it managed to struggle free and fell with a soft thunk onto the pavement.   
He might not have been so curious had they been alive. Killing a cat out of cold blood seemed much different to killing pests like mice and pigeons. But as they were already dead and half the job was done…  
The fabric slipped from his face as the boy lifted his head and glanced over his shoulder quickly. He was just in time to see his homunculus beginning to totter away from him and lunged to catch it. He just managed to seize it but lost his balance and landed awkwardly on his knees and elbow.  His palm closed tightly around the clay doll and it squirmed and writhed trying to get away before the clay cracked and the heart within was squashed. Enoch tossed it aside as it went limp and lifeless in his hand and turned back to the dead animals. He had made his mind up and in seconds produced from the same pocket that had held the homunculus a short knife. It wasn’t as precise and manageable as scalpel but it would do in a pinch.

With his nose wrinkled against the stench, Enoch opened up the first of the cats and, for once, was less inclined to watch his fingers as he began to navigate between flesh and bone to find what he was after. In practice, really there was nothing different in dissecting this cat as there was in dissecting a bird or rodent and yet Enoch felt very much different.

His fingers twitched suddenly as they closed around what he was now sure was the heart he was looking for and with a few careful, albeit stupidly blind cuts and twists, he pulled it free. His hands were coated in blood as he let out a long breath through his mouth and pulled the second cat closer by its tail. His left hand, which loosely held the heart, shuddered involuntarily and he reflexively tightened his fist just a little. Taking a steadying breath, Enoch looked over his shoulder once more to find the coast clear and dragged the knife through the matted tabby fur.   
A feeling like none he’d ever experienced washed over him suddenly. A strange, almost overpowering compulsion in his hands caused him to drop the knife with a clatter onto the pavement as they almost throbbed with an unseen pressure. It was different even to the tugging in his gut and the tingling in his feet the first times he’d used a rat’s heart to bring the old doll to life.

He grumbled to himself and tried to shake it off. He had to hurry before someone caught what he was doing. It might be a perfectly normal habit to Enoch himself but he doubted that many of London’s citizens would agree. Without another moment of hesitation, he plunged his fingers into the opening he’d made.   
The moment his fingers closed around the heart, he gasped and his entire body jerked suddenly once leaving him slightly winded and bemused. That had never happened before, but he was becoming quite accustomed to unusual things happening to him.  
He did not let go, if anything he tightened his hold on the cat just a little and turned wide eyes onto the heart in his left palm. Slowly, guided more by an unfamiliar instinct than anything else, he rolled it to the tips of his fingers and pressed. It was like a wave of energy had crashed over him as the small, formally dead heart in his hand surged and beat once more. Only this time, it didn’t stop so quickly. Instead of a small burst that left him winded and the heart beating, it continued right through his arms and chest, which trembled in response, and exited through the fingers of his right hand, still wrapped around the heart of the second cat.

The whole experience lasted less than ten seconds before the tremors stopped and Enoch dropped both arms, trembling, and fell backwards hard onto the pavement again where he stared in shock at what was happening in front of him. The cat, that had a moment ago been deader than a doornail was slowly stirring. First, it’s small, matted chest began to rise and fall slowly, followed by a tiny twitch in its tail and one paw. In a matter of seconds the animal was rolling forward onto its paws and, despite the gaping gash in its stomach, stood up on trembling legs. It tilted its head curiously at Enoch, whose face wouldn’t have looked out of place in a mausoleum so much colour had drained from it, and meowed once before turning and bounding away on four, very functional, paws.

It took almost a full minute for Enoch to snap out of his daze and turn his stare onto the shrivelled and greying organ in his hand. He dropped it, useless now, to the ground and slowly picked himself up. He was still struggling to comprehend what had just occurred and lifted both bloody hands in front of his face, examining each finger as they tingled slightly. He had really done that. He had not only made the heart beat again but…somehow had transferred that life into another one. He, Enoch O’Connor, could not only animate toys and clay but could apparently restore life to the dead in much the same way.

How long would it last? He didn’t know. Perhaps the cat had already dropped dead again around the corner but for now, Enoch didn’t care about that. It had happened, and that was enough to know for now.

“You alright, mate?”

Enoch jumped. He hadn’t heard footsteps behind him or anything to indicate anyone had seen what he’d done. Then again, he didn’t know they had seen. He spun on the spot, forgetting the carnage on the ground behind him.

Before him was a young man, probably in his twenties, with a mop of ginger hair that poked out from his cap at all angles. He was tall, and freckled and was looking at Enoch with an expression somewhere between concern and bemusement.

“Fine.” Enoch snapped curtly but the damage had been done. The youth’s eyes went to the knife and cut up cat on the ground and then down to Enoch’s bloodied hands. He whisked them behind his back too late but there was little he could do to improve the situation.

“Bloody ‘ell!” The man shouted, quite applicably, and immediately began to back away from Enoch who just swallowed and stayed silent. “What’s wrong wiv you?!”

As he ran back the way he came from, Enoch cursed and bent to pick up his knife which he wiped on the inside of his trouser leg and tucked away. He looked down at his hands. It wouldn’t have been hard to come to the conclusion he’d killed the cat himself and butchered it out of some sick pleasure. He had nothing to clean the blood up with, not even a filthy pool of gutter water on such a fine day. With nothing else to do, he tucked his hands as deep as he could into his pockets, forcing him to hunch forward slightly, and ran.

 _What’s wrong with you?_ The words echoed in his head and he couldn’t answer them. He had accepted quite willingly at first the strange talents manifesting themselves, had thought it was almost fun. They were something different that made him feel important, even if no one knew.  Enoch O’Connor: Life Giver…and Life Taker.  Something at the back of his mind ate at him and nagged to understand why it was happening to him, it wasn’t as if he could tell or ask for help. Of course, it would be easy enough to avoid attention; he simply needed to stop collecting dead animals. But now he knew he could do so much more than make a clay man walk…he felt almost compelled to try it again.

Mercifully, Enoch managed to reach the banks of the river Thames without drawing much attention and washed the blood from his hands. He almost wished he hadn’t, even with the blood he had certainly been cleaner before washing in the filthy, stinking sewer that was the river.

xxxXxxx

Enoch awoke with a start to someone shaking him. He groaned and rolled over in his bed, his eyes snapping open to stare into his father’s face. He was dressed in his undertaker’s blacks as he almost always was and stepped back as soon as he saw Enoch was finally awake.  
“You better ‘urry, Enoch, if you wanna eat ‘fore the service. Up now, lad.”

Enoch sighed as he father turned away and left the room. Sitting upright, he glanced out his window. The sun was barely starting to rise, the sky a soft grey with a faint pink tinge on the horizon. He’d completely forgotten the dawn service. Uriah would shortly arrive with the wagon to load and transport the heavy laden coffin that was ready in the funeral parlour.  
With a sigh, Enoch swung his legs out of bed and dressed hurriedly, pulling on his coat as he left the room and lumbered out onto the landing. A loud, happy squeal from the bottom of the stairs told Enoch that he was the last to rise, even this early and he looked down to find little Faith, her blonde curls bouncing around  ears, smiling up at him and clapping her chubby little hands.   
“Up!” She called clearly, reaching her hands up to him and wiggling her fingers.

He smiled a sleepy sort of smile in return and stifled a yawn as he descended the stairs. As he reached the bottom, he bent down to seize Faith under her arms and swung her up onto his shoulders where she laughed happily and immediately tugged on his hair.   
“Ouch…” He grimaced slightly as his head was jerked to the side like she was trying to steer him herself.

“Enoch!”

“I’m comin’…”

With another yawn he followed his parent’s joint voices towards the kitchen, stooping a little to avoid knocking Faith’s head against the top of the doorframe. There was only one place left at the table, inevitably Enoch was the last to eat as well as rise. A bowl of lumpy porridge, sweetened with brown sugar and a trickle of milk poured over the top sat at his place which he had long since learned to hide his disgust about. Lifting his sister from his shoulders he dropped into his chair and unceremoniously began to shovel a spoonful into his mouth.

Valentine glanced over from the basin where her arms were buried elbow deep in soapy suds and exchanged a look with her husband who was seated at the head of the table near their son.   
Shaking her hands before drying them on her apron she shifted her gaze onto Enoch who kept his head down as he tried to eat as quickly as he dared. Immediately she frowned and looked over at her husband again, moving closer to the table.   
“Owen, ye shouldn’t make ‘im go if ‘e’s ill.”

This comment made Enoch lift his head and raise both eyebrows first at his mother and then his father in turn before speaking rudely through a mouthful of porridge. “What? I ain’t ill.”

Owen barely glanced at Enoch before shrugging his shoulders and turning his attention back to the morning newspaper while his daughter tugged insistently at his trousers. “If the boy says ‘e ain’t ill…’e’s gonna come wiv us.”

Valentine sighed and moved around the table to stand right beside Enoch who was still staring at her confused. She pressed a hand to his head and with a gentle tap against his cheek, turned his face to look at his father.   
“E’s paler than snow, look at ‘im.”

“I’m right ‘ere and I’m fine.” Enoch mumbled, annoyed that they were speaking as if he wasn’t there at all. He screwed up his face as his father finally looked up at him and performed a double take that would have been amusing if it wasn’t at his expense.   
“Blimey, so you are.”

Was he? Enoch had no idea what his face looked like, but he felt just the same as he always did. But the way his parents were both looking at him now made his ears grow hot.   
“I’m fine. I ain’t ill.” He repeated, glancing between his mother and his father and dropping his spoon with a clatter onto his plate.

“Are ye sure? Enoch, ye look-”

“I’m fine, I wanna go.” He snapped again, pushing his chair back from the table, scraping it along the floorboards and standing up. He turned an imploring gaze to his father who suddenly looked concerned.   
After a moment Owen cleared his throat and got to his feet, prompted by the clip clopping of hooves and the whinny of a horse outside the house. Gently prying Faith off his leg, who was still trying to climb up him, he grabbed his hat from the table and motioned for his son to come.  
“’E says ‘e feels fine. Enoch’s gonna come, it’s only a funeral.”

Enoch relaxed a little, and slowly reached up to touch his face self-consciously. He didn’t feel feverish, and his skin was neither cold nor particularly warm to touch, he didn’t understand what they were talking about. But it didn’t matter now, they had to leave.   
He hastened after his father as they left the house and moved to the next building down where Uriah was already unlocking the door to the parlour.

Much to Enoch’s distaste, his uncle performed the same double take his father had when he saw him.  
“Blimey, lad, you look soused!”

Enoch glowered at him and Owen shook his head at his brother’s assumption.   
“’m fine. I’m just tired.” Enoch muttered, steadily becoming more and more confused with every person who stared at him strangely.  As soon as he stepped inside, he bypassed the coffin on the table ready to be moved and went straight towards the large cool box in the corner. Wiping away the condensation from the heavy metal lid, Enoch peered into the reflective surface. Distorted though his reflection was, he immediately understood why his mother assumed he was ill. His skin overnight seemed to have lost three shades of colour, and native Londoners were hardly known for their tan as it was. If he didn’t physically feel fine, he might have assumed the same thing. Slowly he reached up and ran his fingertips from his forehead to his chin, strangely entranced.

“Enoch!”

He snapped out of it in a blink and whirled around to see the two men hefting out the coffin between them. He hurried to pick up his father’s tall hat where he’d left it to pick up the coffin, followed them out the door and locked it behind them. As Owen and Uriah hefted the coffin into the back of the funeral wagon, Enoch scrambled up onto the seat where he was soon squashed between the two undertakers.

xxxXxxx

As winter came and with it Enoch’s 15th birthday, he only grew paler. That in itself wasn’t necessarily unusual given that the sun appeared less and less and the days grew colder. But what was unusual were his eyes. The paler his skin became, the more his eyes appeared sunken. Dark circles were developing around his eyes that had nothing to do with a lack of sleep. They ringed his eyes so dark his whole face took on an almost skeletal sort of appearance and his blue eyes stood out violently in contrast.

It had frightened his mother at first, and for a whole week she behaved as if Enoch were dying. Much to his great annoyance, they even sent for a doctor to examine him.  Enoch had protested so violently to this that when the doctor arrived, his father had to physically restrain him to keep him running from the room. What if somehow they could work out what really was happening to him and why? What if there was something in his hands that would expose his secrets?  
But the doctor found nothing he could properly diagnose the boy with and somewhat hesitantly chalked Enoch’s appearance up to a perfectly harmless skin abnormality, a condition that could be improved by spending more time outdoors.

The suspicion of his parents only fuelled Enoch to hone his abilities even more. He practiced it on small animals; birds and rats mostly. Once, using the hearts of two birds, he tried to revive a dog that had been trampled in the street by a horse. But it had barely lifted its head and let out a pained whine before the hearts in his hand gave out and it dropped dead again. There were some limitations.

He devoted his working hours to learning as much as he could in the funeral parlour, until finally, his father allowed him to perform an embalming on his own, under supervision.

The cadaver in question was a grisly sight. The man, who couldn’t have been older than thirty, had fallen twenty feet from a roof and bashed his head hard on the curb. Needless to say, there was little need for the customary procedures to ensure the body was indeed dead. Overnight, it had been drained of its blood and bodily fluids and kept in near freezing temperatures for preservation. The skin was near translucent it was so pale and half of the head had been so badly crushed it bore little resemblance to the other half.   
Completely undeterred, Enoch pulled on a pair of gloves and proceeded quite casually to begin the process. Making an incision in the neck, he inserted into the carotid artery a long needle which was in turn attached to a thin hose to pump embalming fluid through the body to replace the lost blood.   
With a loud hum and a whir, the pump kicked into gear and Enoch turned to his father with a raised eyebrow and half a smirk on his face.

Owen nodded slowly before clearing his throat and pointing at the body. “The limbs, Enoch, limbs.”

He’d forgotten momentarily, and quickly started to rotate around the body, rolling and massaging each limb in turn and finally the head to ensure an even distribution of the fluid. It was a laborious process, and one which Enoch wanted to finish himself. With two or three pairs of hands it would have taken substantially less time but he was determined to show his father he was already capable of doing it himself.

The full process took hours to complete before the pump was switched off and removed and the face set, at least half of it, into as natural an expression as a dead man could have. Enoch dropped onto a stool and let out a long sigh as he finally snapped off his gloves and prodded his father, who had been starting to doze, in the side.  
“ ‘e’s done.”

 Owen jerked back into consciousness and blinked rapidly in an effort to pretend he hadn’t been falling asleep and really he’d been watching his son the entire time. Enoch was hardly convinced but sat up straighter on his stool and watched eagerly as his father started to examine his efforts.   
After a full two minutes of bending the limbs and checking incisions, Owen looked over at his son with a broad smile and nodded.  
“Yeh’ll make a fine undertaker yet.”

It was the praise he’d wanted to hear, and Enoch’s lips twitched upwards into a proud smile as he looked back at his handiwork.  As he did, something twitched inside him, a strange burst of the energy he’d grown used to harnessing mixed with a morbid curiosity. Was it possible to do?  He’d done a lot of the impossible of late. Surely he could at least try it.


	4. January-February 1908

** 1908 **

With January 1908 came the middle of the harshest winter London had seen for years. So few people ventured into the streets and those that did never stayed out long if they could avoid it. With the exception of the children determined to make a game of pelting anyone in sight with snowballs. Trade in most businesses dwindled in contrast to the soaring demand of coal for fires. Snow fell so deeply over London that the unfortunate horses struggled to pull their loads through it and the wheels of wagons and carts more often than not had to be dug out of inches of snow before they could be used.

Whilst most trades, with the exception of coal, dwindled during this winter, the cities undertakers were in far higher demand. With outbreaks of pneumonia becoming increasingly easy to contract and hunger amongst the poorer classes reaching a dangerous level, the doctors and unfortunately undertakers in turn were busier than ever.

It was in the midst of such freezing conditions that Enoch decided to oblige his curiosities.

He lay wide awake in his bed, not daring to move from it until he was sure both his parents had passed his room on their way to bed. He waited a while after that too ensure that they would be asleep before tossing off the two blankets he’d huddled under and slowly sliding his legs over the side of the bed. The floorboards creaked as soon as he put weight on them and he stopped to listen for any movement elsewhere in the house before standing up. Pushing aside his bed, he upturned the few floorboards he had pried loose to extend his secret hiding place and plunged a hand into it much as he would an animal. Uncovering what he was looking for, Enoch quickly replaced the boards and stood up again. He pulled on his warmest coat and slipped into his boots before slowly slipping from his room onto the landing and down the stairs and quietly and quickly as he dared. The fire was burning low in the grate, giving off the last of its pleasant warmth as Enoch passed the kitchen and stole out of the door into the bitter chill.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and immediately regretted not bothering to put gloves on as he crunched through the snow to the funeral parlour. He’d planned ahead enough to swipe his uncle’s key without his noticing early that morning as he arrived.  
Admitting himself, Enoch let out a breath that misted in the air before him. It was so cold inside without a furnace or fireplace that there was little need at all for the cool box or really embalming at all. Freezing almost did the job itself in the winter.

He could already feel all the blood in his face flooding to his ears and he turned up the collar of his coat in a poor effort to combat it.

The body was laid out on the table, encrusted with a thin layer of ice crystals and so pale the skin was almost translucent. It was a middle aged woman with a hooked nose and greying hair, covered by a thin white sheet. She had been a victim of pneumonia that Uriah and Owen O’Connor had brought in that morning. This corpse would do as well as any other, and Enoch supposed might even be easy to bring back to life than a fat, sixty year old man.  
Enoch pulled out the jar from within his pocket and placed it beside the dead woman’s head. Inside was a heart submerged in a pickling solution to preserve its freshness as long as he could. He’d taken it from a dog that had frozen to death by the river. If pigeon hearts could not effectively bring a dog back to life for more than a moment, he could hardly have expected them to work on a human being.

Without batting an eyelid, Enoch dragged the sheet covering the corpse down. Whatever modesty anyone had in life could hardly be expected to carry through into death. He rubbed his hands together quickly, trying to warm them at least enough to stop the shaking as he picked up the razor sharp scalpel. It shook in his hand, poised over the breastbone for so long that Enoch could have frozen in place without realising it.

  
He could have pretended it was the cold that fogged his mind, but it would have been lying to himself. As accustomed, and strangely intrigued as he was by the sight of death, the only incisions he’d ever made in a human being had been surgical ones to replace blood with embalming fluid. He wasn’t disturbed or disgusted, per se, as much as he was peculiarly curious. If the first time he’d cut open a cat had been odd, this seemed downright ludicrous or even deranged.  
For a split second, Enoch’s lips twitched as he imagined the faces of anyone who walked in and caught him in the act of what he was about to attempt.  He’d be branded as a monster and a freak, and more likely than not a potential murderer in the making.

Releasing a long breath which froze in the air, Enoch dragged down the scalpel in one fluid motion.  His own heart pounded hard in his chest as he hesitated only for a moment before pulling apart skin and flesh and reaching inside before he could think twice again. He might have expected to be more disgusted but no bile rose to his throat, only breaths that he drew quickly and shallowly as he groped around bone and between ribs for what he was searching for.  
The moment his fingers wrapped around her literally cold heart Enoch saw the flaw in his plan. He’d forgotten to even open the jar with the dog’s heart. Cursing to himself he reached out with his left hand and groped for the jar on the further side of the corpse, with some difficulty he pressed it between his chest and the table and carefully unscrewed the lid. Reaching inside, Enoch wrapped his fingers around the dog’s heart and wriggled his hand loose. The jar slipped and shattered on the floor at his feet, sending a pool of pickling solution spreading over the wooden floor.  
“Bloody ‘ell…” Enoch muttered, but otherwise ignored it for the moment and turned his focus back to the task he was attempting.  
Raising the dog’s heart above his head, and tightening his grip on the dead woman’s, Enoch let out a steadying breath and squeezed. As his fingers tightened around the disembodied heart, he felt the familiar ball of energy beginning to pulse inside his chest. In a moment it had become the running current that had become such a part of him that he barely noticed the unpleasantness anymore. But this time it demanded more, his breaths once again grew short and shallow and he gripped both hearts with such intensity he might have driven his fingers through them. With a surge of energy expelled from his fingertips, the dog’s heart lurched in his hand and began to beat.

“Come on…come on…” He muttered through gritted teeth as bloody pickling solution trickled down his sleeve. But the heart in his right hand remained motionless, compressed only by his fingers. With a splutter not unlike a cough, the dog’s heart began to lose the life that Enoch had restored to it. Its beating grew slow and weak as the colour and blood drained from it, leaving a greying clump of flesh Enoch slowly lowered to the table. It hadn’t worked. The body did not so much as twitch as Enoch slowly released his hold on it and withdrew his hand.  
Enoch sighed and kicked the table leg in a fit of frustration. Pain rushed through his almost frozen feet and he bit down on his tongue to keep from hissing out in pain. He looked down at the shrivelled organ on the table and pursed his lips. He was sure now that it was possible to raise a human being, but the heart had given out too soon, it hadn’t been enough. If he wanted to succeed, he needed stronger hearts.

Quickly he pulled the sheet right off the table and bent down to mop up the spilled solution before tossing it back over the corpse and hoping no one would think to ask him to explain why the woman appeared to have been cut open overnight. He gathered the biggest pieces of the broken jar and brushed the rest under shelves and into corners. Lastly, Enoch picked up the spent heart and slipped out of the parlour where he hurled it as hard as he could down the street into the snow and emptied the broken glass from his pockets onto the curb. Tucking his hands in his pockets he hurried quickly    

xxxXxxx

A dark cloud settled over the O’Connor household when little Faith contracted pneumonia in February. The disease was often fatal even among the fittest and strongest people, but for the very young and the elderly, it was nearly always so.  
It had started as a tiny, chesty cough that could have only been a cold but within days she had dissolved into shaking chills and developed such a fever that it terrified Owen, Valentine and Enoch all. With no known cure and only basic medicines available, there was little hope that a two year old could fight it enough to survive. They moved her to a mattress by the fireplace where day and night someone always sat with her.

Six days into her illness, Faith’s health looked grim at best. She was so pale and feverish she could hardly sit herself up and fussed terribly when her mother tried to spoon feed her broth and soup. Enoch woke to his sister’s crying and coughing as he so frequently had done in the last week. The weather was no less freezing than it had been all of January and at first he just groaned to himself and pulled his pillow over his head, trying to not to let fears that his sister might die invade his mind. After five minutes of trying and failing not to think about it, he rolled over and pushed himself out of bed, taking a blanket with him. Wrapping it securely around his shoulders, he wandered out of his room and followed the glow of the fire that flickered against the walls down the hall.

Valentine looked up wearily at the sound of footsteps in the hallway. She sat on the wooden chair by the fire, rocking a bundled up Faith in her arms. The baby’s blonde curls were plastered to her forehead with sweat and she had worn herself out crying as she laid her little head against her mother’s chest. Valentine looked mildly surprised to see her son wander into the room, his own blanket wrapped around his shoulders. At first, for a day or so, both she and Owen had tried to keep Enoch away from Faith, lest he catch pneumonia too. When it became quite apparent that he was blatantly ignoring them anyway, they didn’t bother. Living in the same house would be more than enough to transfer it anyway.  
“Enoch, you should be asleep…” Her voice was thin and exhaustion apparent in everything from her thin face to heavy eyelids.

“She was cryin’.” Enoch muttered in return, pulling his blanket further around his shoulders for warmth and sinking down to sit cross legged on the floor in front of the fire.

“You know how sick she is, Enoch. Don’t be like that now.” Valentine chided weakly before Faith squirmed in her arms and she resumed rocking forward and backwards slightly.

“I ain’t being anyfing.” He didn’t have the desire to argue about it now and wisely dropped the attitude, instead he looked up at his mother and frowned. “ _You_ should go sleep, Mum.” He pushed himself up onto his knees and edged closer to them. “I can watch ‘er.”

Despite how tired she was, Valentine’s eyes widened slightly at her son’s gesture. He wasn’t so rude and bitter all the time that they didn’t know he loved his family, but even so, it was rare for Enoch to offer to do something selfless of his own accord. She was slightly taken aback so that she momentarily forgot to reply. “Excuse me?”

“Yeh need rest too, Mum. I’m up now.” Enoch settled himself on the floor beside Faith’s mattress on the further side from the fire and looked up at his mother like he’d just made the decision for her.

Still slightly stunned at Enoch’s change of attitude in the given situation, Valentine took a moment to look between her two children before brushing Faith’s hair back and kissing her forehead.  
The moment she began to shift her daughter, Faith began to whimper again and Valentine hushed her hurriedly as she slipped from the chair to her knees on the floor and started to tuck her back into her bed.  
“Shh, little one…Mama’s not goin’ far…shh…”

As the blankets were bundled up around his sister, Enoch sat forward a little and stretched out a cool hand over the covers towards Faith who squirmed and tossed as her little eyes flickered between her mother and brother. Her tiny hand seized his fingers and in comparison to the chill of the rest of the house, her skin was quite hot to the touch. As soon as she felt her brother’s presence she seemed to relax a little though her other arm waved towards Valentine as she kissed her forehead again and started to leave the room.

“Mama…mama…” Faith whimpered, starting to toss as she struggled to sit herself off, reaching out in the direction her mother had disappeared.  Her eyes filled with fresh tears and her tiny lips trembled ready to burst out into more sobs.

“Shh…” Enoch hushed, shifting his position until he was sitting on the mattress next to his sister, moving the hand she was grasping to rest on her belly over the covers. “It’s alright, Faith, I’m ‘ere. I’ll ‘ave to do.”

Her eyes, swimming with tears fixed on his face for a moment before she seemed to give up struggling and lay still. Her breaths came in a quick little pants which Enoch wasn’t sure was because of the fever or she was simply trying not to sob. He smiled a little down at her when Faith squeezed his fingers tighter.  
Enoch considered himself a realist and didn’t care to give himself false hope or raise his expectations higher than he knew was likely to happen. He knew perfectly well that the chances of a two year old child fighting through and surviving pneumonia were dismal at best. But for once he hated his own outlook. Even to Enoch, who didn’t laugh or smile genuinely very often, Faith had brought out the best in him in the last two years. She was such a happy child it was almost impossible not to smile with her. Just seeing her so miserable sent a pang of discomfort through his chest, and for once, Enoch couldn’t bear the thought of death.

He just sat there beside her for a full hour, only moving to stoke the fire or sit her up and rub her little back when Faith started coughing again. Finally, when it seemed she would not sleep yet, Enoch pried his hand from hers and moved to sit cross legged on the mattress at her feet.  
“Look ‘ere…I got somefin to show ye.”  
Enoch cast a glance over his shoulder briefly before reaching down his nightshirt and pulling from it a little clay man. Faith just rubbed her eyes wearily and struggled to push herself up to see. Enoch leaned over to pick her up and sit her in his lap. Wrapping her up in the blanket around his own shoulders, leaving one of his arms and shoulders free, he tilted his head to smile at her. She craned her head up to him briefly before reaching one chubby hand towards the clay man lying on the mattress in front of her.  
“Doll…” She rasped and Enoch smiled as she lay back against his shoulder.

“Yeah. It’s a doll, but it’s a special doll.” With Faith’s eyes following his hand, Enoch reached out, picked up the homunculus figure and pressed his thumb firmly to its chest. The clay man jerked in his fingers and started to wriggle its limbs experimentally.  
Enoch looked down at his sister whose eyes had gone wide and were now fixed on the moving doll in his hand. He dropped it to the mattress and poked it upright with a finger.  “Go on then…”

The homunculus struggled to its feet and waved a little arm up at Faith before jumping a few centimetres into the arm and kicking its feet together. As it toppled clumsily backwards, Faith laughed. It was a weak, throaty sound but it was a real laugh again, and Enoch grinned in response as he looked down at her.  
When the little doll started to run around in circles on the blankets and kept falling over lumps of piled up covers, Faith laughed harder and clapped her little hands together excitedly.  Reaching up one hand she patted Enoch’s chin and smiled at him before pointing back at the doll. “Doll fall!”

“Yeah…’e’s funny, eh?” Enoch smiled, wrapping her in more of his blanket when she started to shiver again before quickly reaching out to catch the homunculus as it started to climb off the mattress. “It’s our secret, don’t tell…” As an afterthought he muttered more to himself. “Not that you know what a secret is.”

“E’och doll.”

He kept Faith amused, with the occasional fit of coughing, with the homunculus for a lot longer than he expected her attention span to last. He made it dance for her, and lifted it to her face so she could touch it and giggle when it poked her nose lightly. For a while he could almost forget how sick she was she seemed so happy again. Eventually her little eyes started to droop and he felt her falling asleep against his shoulder. Enoch sighed and caught the homunculus where it had been swinging its little legs off the edge of the mattress again. With another press to its chest, the doll went limp in his fingers again.  
Slowly, Enoch pushed himself up onto his knees and gently lowered his sister back into her nest of blankets. She stirred and coughed a little but did not seem to wake until he pried her little arms off of his and tucked the covers back around her.  
“E’och…doll.” She murmured, her eyes half lidded and one hand gripping at nothing.

Enoch looked down at the inanimate clay figure and bit his lip before he sighed. What was the harm?  
He moved closer to the fire, and Faith started to whimper as he left her line of sight. Cracking open the clay chest, Enoch pried the dead mouse heart out from within and tossed it into the embers. By morning it would be so charred it would easily be mistaken to be coal. Hurrying back to Faith’s bedside and crouching down he handed her the clay figure. Her hand immediately wrapped around it and pulled it to her side, hugging it close like a teddy bear.  
“Go ta sleep, Faith.” Enoch murmured, pulling his blanket back over his shoulders and trying to get comfortable on the floor at her bedside. As her eyes finally started to close he added in a whisper so soft he barely heard his own voice utter the words “Don’t die.”

xxxXxxx

Miraculously, four days later, Faith’s fever had broken. Her chills and shivering were abating and the cough was lessening each day. The overwhelming majority of children who came down with pneumonia suffered from it until an early death, and there had been little reason to hope that Faith would struggle through it and recover.  But as she improved little by little, there was reason to hope again. Day by day, Faith ate more and coughed less. They still kept her warmed by the fire where Enoch, when he was left alone with her, would make another homunculus perform for her. He saw little need to keep his abilities a secret from a two year old who could barely talk. Even if she managed to string a sentence together enough to tell anyone, why would they believe it?

The worst of the winter had abated, and the cold became more bearable as more people began to trickle onto the streets. Children were more commonly seen throwing snowballs in the last of the murky, dirty snow that lined the edges of the roads. But while the bitter chill was easing, Enoch’s desire to try and bring a human being back to life, had not.  
His first attempt had failed dismally, and hadn’t achieved even a twitch. The heart he had used was too small and weak to reanimate a human’s and Enoch knew he needed bigger. How he would get his hands on the hearts of larger animals, even just a pig, was another matter. He was hardly about to break into a stable and slaughter someone’s horse and live cows and pigs weren’t common in the city. But he did not need to kill anything to get its heart.

Enoch saw his opportunity in the window of a butcher’s shop on a Monday afternoon.  The off cuts and organs, particularly livers and kidneys, of beef and pork were in frequent demand by ladies shopping for their families meat. He stepped over a young girl in rags clutching a raggedy looking cat in her lap on the curb and was promptly elbowed aside by a stout middle aged woman with a ridiculous bonnet almost twice the size of her head. Surely in the cold it would have been sensible to dress more practically. Enoch scowled but sidestepped out of the way of several men and women milling around the shop, craning to look over heads into the windows and gossiping about how expensive good beef was. Drawing his coat closer to his chest, Enoch managed to sidle himself into the shop where the two butchers  in bow ties and white aprons rushed about hurriedly filling orders and wrapping meat in paper.  
Enoch tugged his cap a little lower over his face to try and reduce the chance of being recognised as he pushed his way towards an ice box on the wall, in which a range of off cuts were displayed. If he just found one heart…if he could just try it once. He wouldn’t have to resort to thievery all the time, Enoch told himself. If it worked, he would find another way to get what he needed. Besides, it was only one comparatively small part. It was a poor justification and Enoch knew it but he couldn’t bring himself to care much as he pushed aside a poorly cut hunk of pork and found what he wanted. There was one there after all. The fifteen year old looked up and over his shoulder one more time, his blue eyes seeking out the butchers who were paying no attention to him in their rush. He chanced it. Reaching out, Enoch picked up the heart from the ice and, as subtly as he could, drew it inside his jacket.  



	5. 1908

** 1908 **

For the first time, Enoch had been left alone in the funeral parlour to begin an embalming process on his own while both Owen and Uriah attended a funeral. It was almost too perfect an opportunity for Enoch to believe his luck. Had the fellow not died in the early hours of that morning, Enoch would be in his coat and hat and riding alongside his father on the wagon.

The body was that of a middle aged man in his forties who had suffered a fatal heart attack in the early hours of the morning. He had been dead before the doctor could arrive. Satisfied that Enoch knew enough to handle what needed to be done by himself, at least for an hour or so, Owen had consented to leave him behind from the funeral. Leaving he and his brother to be pall bearers for that morning’s funeral.  
The man lay, still half-dressed in his trousers and open shirt, on the table in the centre of the room when Enoch trudged in from the house as the wagon turned the corner down the street on its way to the church and cemetery.

Closing the door behind him, Enoch pulled out the homunculus from his pocket where it had been trying to squirm its way out since being confined to the cloth interior. It tumbled onto the floor as he dropped it carelessly and performed quite the comical somersault that would have had Faith in hysterical, bell like laughter.   
The boy strode over to the ice box in the corner, opened it and leaned over so far he had almost half submerged himself in ice. After groping around for several seconds in the cold contents, his hand closed around what he was searching for. Pulling from within the pig’s heart he had hidden two days previously for preservation, Enoch let the chest lid of the box crash closed. The heart was unsurprisingly frozen solid as he set it aside on the table where it rocked solidly. He cast an eye briefly over at the clay figure curiously running laps around the room and whistled to it as if it were a dog. It skidded to a halt and lifted a clay hand to its head as it faced him in a kind of salute. Enoch smirked to himself before quickly deciding to get a move on. He needed to be quick, and if it failed, he at least needed to start the embalming process before his father returned.

Enoch sucked in a breath and before he could think twice about it, drew a long, clean cut down the corpse’s chest. Unlike the woman he had first tried to resurrect, this man had not been drained of blood. It would be far messier. The fifteen year old pursed his lips before shrugging off his coat. He immediately felt the chill as he stripped his bracers off his shoulders where they hung from his trousers either side and rolled up both sleeves to the elbow. Feeling a tug at his trouser leg, Enoch looked down to see the homunculus trying to climb up him and sighed before bending down to pick it up and set it on the table beside the dead man’s leg.

As soon as he picked up the pig’s heart he knew it would be too frozen to use. Cursing under his breath Enoch cast another careful look at the door and moved over to the small, seldom used furnace in the corner. A few stray pieces of kindling and half used coal were still stacked ready for use. Standing up straight, Enoch reached above his head to find the little matchbox on a high shelf. Dropping to his knees, he opened the slightly bent door of the furnace and nudged the more flammable pieces of kindling to the top of the pile. With slightly shaking hands he struck one of the few matches and waved it close to the coal and kindling. He only needed a small flame long enough to thaw the heart. After a few seconds, as the flame rapidly approached Enoch’s fingertips, it caught and he dropped the match into the furnace. Quickly, he stood and hurried back to the table, seized the pig’s heart and went back to kneeling at the furnace. As the kindling began to catch alight, Enoch carefully held the heart just within range of the little warmth. He felt it begin to soften and thaw in his fingers and turned it slowly until he could softly compress the flesh in his fingers. It would do. He needed to hurry.   
Standing up, Enoch left the heart on the table, filled a near empty formaldehyde bottle from the sink and extinguished the small flames with a hiss.

With the air of a surgeon about to perform a well-rehearsed operation, the boy moved to the side of the table beside the cadaver and quickly ensured his sleeves would not slip. Taking a breath, Enoch slipped his right hand into the man’s chest through the opening he had created and began to navigate through flesh and bone to find what he was searching for. Forced upwards and out by his hand, blood began to trickle out of the corpse but Enoch was not disturbed in the least. After a few moments of searching his fingers fastened around the dead heart and he felt a surge of excitement rush through him as he picked up the pig’s heart in his free hand and raised it above his head. It had to work this time.

Closing his eyes briefly, Enoch sucked in a single long breath and focused on the energy beginning to swell within his chest. His eyes snapped open and his breath began to escape in little puffs as the ball surged into a current and Enoch became the conductor between the two hearts.  
In moments, the pig’s heart in his right hand began to throb and beat again as life was restored to it. His fingers tightened on both hearts and he gritted his teeth, breathing hard through them as the surging within his chest became stronger than it had felt before. Having become so familiar with the feeling, it was rarely even uncomfortable anymore but this time it was so intense it was near painful. As with the animals he had succeeded in bringing back, he began to feel waves of energy rushing through his right arm and culminating in his fingertips. Then with a surge, stronger than it had ever been on cats and dogs, it escaped through his fingers and he felt, finally, the cold dead heart of the man beginning to beat again.

For a moment Enoch was so shocked that it had worked that he began to slacken his grip. He immediately tightened it again and stared, dumbstruck as the whole body gave a jerk so violent it sent the homunculus toppling from the knee on which it had been perched. Slowly, the dead man’s mouth started to open and close like a fish and he uttered a low groan. The eyelids opened, revealing slightly milky but otherwise strangely alert eyes which immediately focussed on Enoch’s own wide ones.   
He did not immediately seem to register the hand inside his chest, or the room in which he had been placed as slowly the man attempted to sit up.

“I say, boy…” The voice came out rasping and thick and the moment he spoke, Enoch withdrew his hand, bloodied and still tingling, from the reanimated corpse, though his fingers tightened on the still beating pig’s heart in his hand. “I say, what exactly am I doi-” The rest of the sentence was lost in another low groan as the dead man struggled to lift one stiff, almost translucently skinned arm in front of him.  
Enoch took half a step backwards as the balding man turned his head back to him and the slow eyes moved from Enoch’s face, to the heart still raised over his head and back again. “What is this…is…that...?”

“Bit slow for a dead guy, ain’t ye?” Enoch found his tongue and, keeping a firm hold on the pig’s heart, trying to keep what life he had given it for as long as possible. “Nah, ye still ‘ave your ‘art.”

“You’re the O’Connor young’un…”

“And I can send ye right back, watch it.” Enoch warningly held out the heart in his hand as the big man swung one still extremely stiff arm in his direction.

“I don’t…understand. I was…what is this?” The reanimated corpse waved his barely responsive limb in front of him, his face darkening as he looked around the room somewhat vacantly.

“Rigor mortis…” Enoch added and walked around to the end of the table, still holding the heart out in front of him as if it were a shield should he need to defend himself. Not that he saw much need for that. “You was dead…still kinda are.”

“No, you. What are _you_?” With that, the man managed to swing one stiff leg off the table and, supporting himself leaning against the table, forced himself into a standing position. He faced Enoch with an expression somewhere between a strange curiosity and anger.

Before Enoch could so much as open his mouth to answer he felt the heart in his hand beginning to slow down. He tore his eyes off of the standing corpse to glance at the organ. It was beginning to discolour, the blood within it draining over his hand and down his bare forearm towards his elbow. It throbbed a few more times in his fingers before subsiding and beginning to shrink into a wrinkled lump of flesh. His blue eyes darted back up in to see the man who had a moment ago been standing strong on his own feet again, topple and collapse against the table with a groan. His legs twitched reflexively as the life Enoch had given him drained away again.

It had actually worked. The heart of a pig had been strong enough to raise a human being. Granted, it had been brief, but Enoch didn’t care how long it lasted right now, he only cared that he could do it at all. The corpse had moved and even stood himself up, had spoken to Enoch and apparently had recalled begin dead.  
A strange sense of elation inflated the boy and a grin broke out over his pale face. A whole new world of possibilities was opening to him wider and wider every day.

His elation was short lived as he looked at the large, dead corpse on the floor and the blood coating his arms and now the table. He hadn’t quite thought about what to do about the mess before his father and uncle returned. An alarming thought crossed his mind as he looked across the funeral parlour. He hadn’t even locked the door, anyone could have walked in.   
Sighing, Enoch looked down at the dead man and frowned.

“Damn…”

Kneeling down beside the body, the body attempted to wedge his shoulder underneath the corpse’s dead weight and heaved with all the strength he could muster. With a groan of effort and straining his shoulders, he managed to heft the torso onto the table. After a great deal more pushing and pulling, and almost a full ten minutes, Enoch had the man back onto the table and rolled back onto his back. He certainly was no longer cold, in fact he was sweating with the effort as washed his arms under icy water from the tap. He rolled his sleeves back down and readjusted his bracers over his shoulders, Enoch pulled his coat back on and tucked the wasted heart into his pocket.

No sooner had he made the surgical incisions to drain the blood from the cadaver and prepared the embalming fluid then the whinny of a horse signalled the return of the undertakers.

Uriah O’Connor came in first, removing his tall hat as he ducked through the door. He patted his nephew’s shoulder as he walked up to the table. “ ‘ow’s it comin’, Enoch?”

“Slowly.” Enoch mumbled and then his eyes went to the long slice down the middle of the man’s torso and his own blood seemed to run cold.   
His uncle seemed to see it at the same time as his hand tightened on Enoch’s shoulder briefly before it fell and he moved around to the other side of the table and dragged one long finger down the length of the torso.  
“What the ‘ell is this?” The door swung open again and Uriah waved his brother over before looking directly at an impassively faced Enoch. “What’d you do?”

“Nofin’.” Enoch lied through his teeth automatically. “You didn’t notice ‘im before? Doctor must’a done it ta check ‘is ‘art.”

For a few seconds, he could see the doubt flicker across the faces of both men as they looked between him and the dead man slowly. Enoch kept his face an unreadable mask and betrayed no emotion until his eyes flickered to the corner and caught a glimpse of movement.   
In a few seconds he had crossed to the corner and quickly clasped his hands around the clay figured swaying unsteadily on little feet. Shoving it into his pocket he whirled around and shrugged his shoulders.   
“Thought there was a mouse…”

xxxXxxx

Possibilities flooded Enoch’s mind with such frequency it kept him awake late into the night tossing in his bed. He could do it, he had the power, and he wanted to use it now more than ever before. If just one pig’s heart had been able to raise a dead man for a few minutes, it should be an experiment he could repeat with relative ease.   
How long could they stay alive at once? Would it have made a difference to keep a grip on both hearts at once and strengthen the charge so to speak? Where would he obtain the supplies he needed to keep doing it? Enoch knew very well he couldn’t simply steal them from the butcher whenever he felt the urge. Amongst other reasons, he was bound to be caught in the act eventually. He needed something more low profile though he was hardly likely to find a plethora of dead pigs and sheep in the street.

Even if he did have access to hearts, how would he explain the aftermath once the corpse was once more a corpse? He was sure that his father hadn’t bought his weak excuse that morning. He had to find another way to hide the evidence of foul play. Perhaps more aptly placed incisions, or even after the embalming process had been completed so he could simply cover his tracks. That was it. He’d just have to hide it, or risk being found out.

He couldn’t count on being able to obtain hearts from a butcher anytime he wanted, and horses were the largest animals that frequented city streets. He was hardly going to go around killing them.  
The idea struck Enoch so suddenly that it seemed obvious. Most butchers received their meat from slaughterhouses. If nothing else, there were bound to be pigs and cows around there. Could it work?

xxxXxxx

Enoch’s heart beat loudly in his chest as he jumped the cemetery fence and slid down to lean against it and catch his breath. It was well after midnight and he’d been forced to abandon his mission early and run when he thought he caught a glimpse of a man’s shadow cast by lantern light coming around a corner towards him. He was sure he hadn’t been seen, and though no one had pursued him, he had scrambled back through the hole in the wall surrounding the slaughterhouse, and run for it. The newspaper package he had stuffed beneath his shirt and coat, felt peculiar against his skin and as he caught his breath, he withdrew it for a moment. The paper rustled, seemingly unusually loudly in his need to be silent, as he unwrapped the parcel to be sure that the spoils he had gotten away with were still there.   
Enoch had gotten away with two hearts he had managed to locate after almost a full hour of sneaking around the place before his hasty retreat. Their size, slightly larger than those of pigs, suggested to him that they were from cows. Glancing around, the lad quickly wrapped them back up and stuffed the parcel back into his clothes as he pushed himself to his feet.   
Cutting through the small cemetery in the church yard was the fastest way to get home, Enoch had always prided himself on his knowledge of London’s shortcuts and alleys. With a furtive look towards the smog covered, modest looking church, Enoch began to pick his way through rows of headstones, some of which graves he had helped to dig.   
He hastened his pace after half a minute and began to take less care in where he placed his feet. In his hurry, his arms clutched around his stomach to hold the package hidden there close, he stumbled suddenly and fell.

As an orange glow washed over the headstones a few rows away from him, it was for once Enoch’s own heart that seemed to stop for a moment.

“Who’s there?”

The voice, old and trembling though it was, held Enoch in his position like chains for a moment. He had stumbled and landed hard on one knee, his back to the light he could see beginning to grow brighter and nearer. Had he not fallen at the moment, he would certainly have been thrown into full view.

“I said show yourself!”

The voice was stronger now, more determined as Enoch stayed perfectly still. He wasn’t well hidden at all, he knew very well that his crouched shape could surely be seen by even the aged man approaching behind him. His mind raced as he tried to debate how quickly he could get away without being recognised. If he moved quickly, he could manage it before the light was thrown on him.

Enoch decided in a second. As the lantern washed over the graves a few rows to his right, Enoch launched himself back to his feet and bolted. Keeping his head down and remaining as stooped as he could manage without seriously inhibiting his speed or vision, he ran well trodden paths towards the far wall of the cemetery. His blood seemed to rush to his ears, drowning out in his head the shouting of the man he left behind still trying in vain to stop the intruder.

That was far too close.

xxxXxxx

The cow heart worked better than Enoch had expected. Or, his pride nagged at him, perhaps it was simply himself that was better. The next time he tried to bring a man back to life, it resulted in the corpse actually walking several steps towards Enoch who had been almost unnerved by it and taken a hesitant step backwards. He had ended it himself that time after full minutes had passed of reanimation and the corpse had begun to recover some movement. Closing his fingers around the heart in his hand, he had snuffed out the life he had restored. Enoch had been more careful this time and chosen a body on which the embalming process had already been completed, making it far easier for him to simply hide the incisions beneath the clothes ready for the funeral.

Amongst his other experiments, Enoch had begun to store jars of bird and mice hearts in pickling solution sealed tightly so as not to smell beneath his floorboards. He shut himself inside his bedroom when he wasn’t working with his father in the funeral parlour and tried to see how many homunculi he could make in a short space of time. Almost always, he’d keep one alive, running and climbing around his room. Stupid though the clay men were, he preferred their company, and that of the dead, to the company of living people.

A pounding on the door woke Enoch from a late sleep a few mornings after his last midnight excursion to the funeral parlour. The boy rolled over in his bed and groaned as he cracked open a vibrantly blue eye just as the door opened and his father entered the room.

“Enoch.” Owen’s Cockney accented voice was harsher than usual as he didn’t wait for his son to open the door. There was little hope that he would these days. He was greeted with the sight of Enoch still in bed and bleary eyed. The deep circles around his eyes were made worse by an apparent lack of sleep as he sat up in bed and grumbled.   
“Okay, okay…I’m up.”

“Ye ‘aven’t been alone in the shop, ‘ave ye?”

His father’s unexpected question caught a tired Enoch off guard easily and he immediately tensed a little, his fingers twisting in the blankets as he wrinkled his nose and tried to shrug as nonchalantly as he could.  
“No…why?”

“Then why did I find _this_ in the freezer?”

Enoch froze as he stared at the object his father had just pulled from behind his back. In his gloved hand was what appeared to be a half defrosted hunk of meat wrapped in soggy newspaper. He was normally so carefully not to leave any hearts hidden in the freezer for too long, or at least to bury them at the very bottom. But he had forgotten about the second cow’s heart.

Taking his son’s silence and stunned expression for guilt, Owen stared him down and waved the animal heart in front of him with a look of disgust one would not have expected to see on an undertaker.

Enoch composed himself as quickly as he could, though his own heart seemed to beat ten times faster in his chest.

“Well, ‘ow should I know?  I didn’t put it there…is ‘at an ‘art?”

“I fink you know exactly wha’ it is, Enoch. What the ‘ell ‘ave you been doin’ up ‘ere?”

Enoch scowled defiantly and threw off his blankets as he shifted to sit on the edge of his bed, staring up at his father and trying not to look at the heart he was still holding. “Not cuttin’ stuff up, anyway.” He lied quickly and rolled his eyes. “I didn’ do it, leave me alone…why would I?”

“Don’t talk to me like that, lad.” Owen pointed a rarely used warning finger at his son whose attitude only seemed to worsen the longer he spent shut up by himself. “It wasn’ yer uncle, ‘course I’m gonna ask you.”

“That’s accusing me, actually.” Enoch rudely snapped back without even trying to bite his tongue, “Ye could trust me, father. I ain’t stupid. Why would I do that for?”

There was a long, tense moment of silence between father and son in which Enoch’s gaze did not falter from his father’s eyes. He must have seemed convincing enough because even as Owen’s face drained of colour and then flushed an angry red, he seemed to hesitate. He couldn’t explain the sudden appearance of an animal’s heart in his mortuary but he couldn’t really think of any reason his son would have put it there.

“…’urry up and get downstairs then…we gotta job ta do…” Owen muttered and, without another argument, he turned on his heel and left the room.

The moment he heard footsteps on the stairs, Enoch groaned quietly and dropped his head into his hands. He couldn’t afford another mistake like that, it wasn’t likely to be passed off in the same way twice.


	6. 1908-Winter 1909

** 1908- Winter 1909 **

For over a month Enoch kept a low profile. So as not to draw his father’s attention to any strange behaviour, he kept his head down and followed the daily routine in the mortuary to the letter. He didn’t want to take the risk of being caught after so narrowly avoiding it only a month before due to the stupid mistake of not hiding his resources properly.

At home he still kept to his room, coming out only to eat, after a boxing over the ears or two for trying to get away with eating in his room away from the family. Sometimes across the dinner table, little Faith would grin at him and suddenly demand, “Enoch, doll!” To counter his parents slightly confused, albeit amused, expressions, Enoch would simply shrug and look back down at his plate to attempt to his the twitch as his lips threatened to crack a smile. So long as she didn’t miraculously form a complete sentence of ‘Enoch makes little clay dolls dance for me’, he thought it harmless enough to let her in on a little of his secret. Even if she did, were their parents likely to believe it?

After six weeks of enlivening nothing but homunculi and the occasional dead bird or cat on the street, Enoch’s fingers began to itch. Or more correctly, the soles of his feet did. He had long since embraced the strange tingling in his feet and fingers whenever he used his talents but now that he had been trying to resist the urge to bring another human back from the dead, it was beginning to irritate him.

Rain drizzled down in sheets so light it barely felt much more than fog on the faces of London’s early risers, mainly workmen and school children, as they milled about the streets towards their various jobs and classes. Enoch had been up since dawn with his father, having been called to collect the body of a man who had died in the night. His wife, a matronly looking woman in her forties with a bossy tone and authoritative manner of speaking, had seemed strangely at peace with the passing of her husband. As they had wrapped and lifted the corpse inside the wagon, she had loudly expressed her keenness to come into the parlour that same day to discuss funeral arrangements. As they were about to leave, Enoch had suddenly decided he preferred to walk back, leaving Uriah and Owen to take the wagon.

It wasn’t only the wait that irritated Enoch, he considered as he stifled a yawn and kicked a stray stone down the street, but the secrecy in which he had to conduct his ‘experiments’. He didn’t want to be found out by any means, he knew nothing could come of that, but Enoch’s pride in his morbid achievements kept nagging at his mind how great it would be for them to be witnessed. Even making dolls for Faith to watch run around her bed filled him with a little more pride. He was in two minds as he ducked under a long beam being carried by two sturdy workmen who turned and shouted something after him which he ignored. Other men and boys didn’t concern him anymore. They were painfully normal to him, why should he be bothered?

Enoch was special. He had long known it now. Wherever his powers had come from they were unique and they were a part of him, so why shouldn’t he use it? Why should he have to hide? Because a superstitious and religious Britain in 1900 was not a place where difference was celebrated. He was no sideshow act, he toyed with dead things and transferred life between them. He had very nearly been caught in his morbid habit of collecting hearts once, and had, a few years ago really been caught with his hands in a dead cat. It didn’t take much imagination to know what the wrong person would do to him if they knew what he was really doing. But all the same, he ached to do it again.

Enoch sighed and reached a hand up to scratch the back of his head as he stopped on the street corner. He could see the funeral wagon and aging bay horse at the end of the street outside the funeral parlour. Dropping his hand from his dark curls, the fifteen year old made his decision. He had a few minutes before his father and uncle would know he was intentionally dawdling, but that would be enough if he hurried.

xxxXxxx

It was a frightfully risky idea to put into action within the same building as three others and separated from them only by a few walls and doors. At any moment someone might have walked out to speak to him, or fetch something they had forgotten.   
Enoch waited impatiently for his chance to do it. It was hardly lunchtime when the large, matronly wife of the dead man they’d collected that morning came into the shop. She shot Enoch a filthy look as she strode past, pushing him out the way with a robust shoulder like he was dirt to her eyes. Enoch made an obscene gesture behind her back as his father ushered her aside into the small room they used as an office to discuss business with clients. Uriah, who had moved to close the door behind the discourteous woman who had left it wide open, caught the gesture and raised a warning eyebrow at his nephew. Nevertheless, he nudged Enoch with his shoulder as he passed and leaned over to mutter, “I ‘fought of that too…” to him before chuckling quietly and following their client.

Brushing away a stubborn curl of brown hair that kept falling in front of his eyes, Enoch glanced at the door as it closed behind the undertakers. He didn’t have long, but he bargained on at least five or ten minutes before someone emerged from the room.

The boy shrugged off his coat and rolled up his sleeves to the elbows. Casting a furtive glance at the closed office door, he crossed the room towards the table where the husband who had just died lay stretched out and covered with a sheet. Pulling down the sheet halfway, Enoch unbuttoned the shirt to the last few buttons and tossed the grey sheet back over the chest. He drew in a breath and left his scalpel resting over the abdomen. He paused at the door and still hearing three voices engaged in conversation, Enoch pushed forward. He had hidden the pig’s heart he’d taken from the old offcuts discarded by the butcher in the cool box again only an hour ago, and kept careful watch across the parlour in case he needed to intercept anyone in opening it. But he hadn’t.

The heart still stank after chilling but Enoch was for a moment in doubt that it would work at all, being- he suspected- far from fresh. He only had minutes to carry out the rest of his plan and let the heavy lid of the box fall with a dull thump as he hurriedly paced back to the corpse.

“Come on…” He muttered to himself as his hand trembled slightly on the scalpel poised point down over sheet and flesh to minimise the mess. “Just do it…”

Wiping his face clean of any emotion, Enoch cast one final look towards the door and dragged the scalpel down through fabric and skin. Blood, forced outwards as he pressed down, trickled out and over the sheet as he made an incision just large enough in which to fit his hand. Without hesitating, Enoch plunged his hand into the dead chest halfway up his forearm as he navigated through flesh and ribs to find the dead heart. It was messy work, and blood poured out over his hand and onto the sheet he had forethought enough to cover the dead man with. He would have to dispose of them later when he had the chance. After a moment of feeling and groping, the boy’s fingers latched onto his goal and with a little difficulty, he curled his hand around ventricles and muscle until he had a firm grip on the heart. Raising the pigs heart above his head in his left hand, Enoch took a deep breath and closed his eyes against the cool light in the room and steeled himself against the sharp burst of energy he was so familiar with. It burst from his chest and travelled up his outstretched arm until the pigs heart jerked and began to beat.   
Enoch let out a breath through his teeth and opened his eyes, staring down at the motionless, dead face on the table. All his conscious effort was going into keeping a tight grip on both hearts as he felt himself once more become the cord binding them together and a home for the current as it began to flow.   
His whole body tremored with effort as he willed the heart not to give out too soon and a low groan split his lips that had until now been pursed so tightly together they might have been sealed shut.

It happened suddenly. The man’s heart seemed to leap within its dead shell and began to beat once more. Enoch only had seconds to finish what he had started. He let go with his right hand and drew his arm out of the body with such lack of care he felt his wrist scratch on bone. A hand began to twitch as he ripped off the sheet and hastily wiped the worst of the blood off himself and with one hand tried to button the shirt over the cut.

The dead lips parted and a long, rasping sound rattled the air just as Enoch made his decision. He cast the bloodied sheets at the back of a pile of used ones and ran for the door to the office. The pigs heart was still pounding in his fingers as he kept it hidden behind his back and tried to keep the power running as he pounded on the door of the office and opened the door to stick his head through. What better way to disguise that it was his doing than by bringing it to attention himself?

xxxXxxx

“We ‘ave fine oak models if ye after somefin’-what?” Owen O’Connor looked up from the other side of the spindly legged desk in the small room just as Uriah dropped the samples of wood as there was a sudden pounding on the door and a second later, his son’s head poked through the opening.

“Enoch, what are ye-”

“Look here, boy, what is the meaning of this?” Both men turned in surprise to the widow who was staring at Enoch’s head in indignation before either of them could say a word to the boy themselves. “We’re in business at the moment, that’s quite enough-”

Enoch’s face seemed even paler than usual, his eyes standing out against almost translucent skin as he scowled at the woman and cut her off, staring directly at his father instead. “‘E ain’t dead.”

“What are ye talkin’-” Uriah too was cut off as Enoch spoke over the top of him.

“’E ain’t dead!” He repeated insistently and Owen pushed himself to his feet and sidled around the desk towards the door.   
As his father approached, Enoch drew back from the door and backed away a few steps as the two men stepped out. He pointed his free hand towards the table in the corner, keeping his left clasped behind his back and sticking near to the wall.

“Whatcha mean ‘e’s not dea-”

A loud thud drew three pairs of eyes in the direction Enoch was pointing across the room and as one, the brothers jaws dropped loose and hung stupidly at the sight. The silver haired gentleman seemed to have fallen to the floor and was now lifting himself up with the edge of the table. The same man they had loaded dead into the back of the wagon that morning and lay out on that very table.

“What in the good Lord’s earf-”

Slowly, as if he were still regaining control of his own body, the corpse drew himself up to stand and stared right at them with slightly milky eyes.

“I…don’t-‘e was dead…” Uriah’s voice was higher and wavered far more than usual as he pointed a shaking finger towards the man whose jaw was now opening and closing slowly, as if trying to remember how to speak.

“Dead?” The voice of Raymond Gallaway was slightly hoarse but otherwise was very much his own as he stared at the men across the room and a suddenly affronted expression appeared on the deathly pale skin. “I should say not, good sirs, and I will be bidding you good day!”

Perhaps roused by the surprising sound of her husband’s voice, Mrs. Gallaway suddenly pushed her way through the door, quite red in the face as she stared between the undertakers. “What is the meaning of th-” Her gaze passed them by and landed on her husband who had just turned around and taken two very stiff steps towards the front door.

Several things happened at once.

Rosemary Gallaway let out a scream that could have, quite appropriately, woken the dead and her large frame toppled backwards in a faint, landing with a thud on the floor so strong that the men all felt it tremble beneath their feet. At the same time, the heart that Enoch clenched behind his back gave one last feeble little beat and went still in his fingers. Barely a moment after that, a low groan left the dead man’s lips and he fell face forward onto the floor with a crunch as his legs crumpled.

Standing directly behind both his father and his uncle, Enoch subtly slipped the shrivelled and grey heart into his pocket and allowed himself a quick grin as a sense of elation began to balloon in his chest. He wiped it off his face quickly and tried to paint on the same expression of shock to mirror his father before hurrying between them and looking at each in turn.   
“See? … ‘E wasn’t dead…”

Uriah and Owen wore near identical expressions somewhere between horror and bemusement. All colour had drained from both their faces leaving them almost as ghostly looking as Enoch as they stared dumbstruck at the unmoving man on the floor.  
Owen’s mouth opened and closed stupidly for a second before he cleared his throat and seemed to regain a little composure. “Did you-”

“’ow could the kid ‘ave done it?”   
Enoch was quietly thankful for his uncle’s interruption, though he was quite sure his father hadn’t really believed he was responsible for this. To anyone but himself it would have sounded completely ludicrous.  
  
“Well…‘e couldn’t ‘ave been dead…”Uriah slowly stepped over towards the body, shaking his head as he crouched down by Gallaway’s silver haired head. He reached up a hand to scratch his own head of thick dark hair in confusion before somewhat hesitantly pressing two fingers to the neck of the corpse to feel for a pulse. Finding nothing he lifted the heavy, limp wrist and watched as it dropped without resistance to the floor with a thud. “But ‘e sure is now…”

A quite whimper turned all living heads in the room to the fallen Mrs. Gallaway who was weakly stirring on the floor outside the open office door. Owen snapped to attention and regained control of his limbs, immediately moving over to try and help the woman who was beginning to shriek hysterically.

“Enoch, gimme an ‘and wiv ‘im.”

The teenager snapped his eyes back to his uncle who was waving him over and hurried to assist. Together, they hefted the heavy corpse up with great difficulty and dragged him between them back to the embalming table. Something wet began to pool against Enoch’s shirt and he looked down to see the pool of blood blossoming through Gallaway’s shirt. Uriah had seen it too as they heaved the man halfway onto the table.

“What the-that wasn’ there before-‘ey!”

Enoch’s eyes widened a miniscule amount as his uncle suddenly bent to pick something up and for a moment he panicked that the pig’s heart might have fallen from his pocket. He clapped a hand against his leg and let out a soft breath to himself as he felt it still there.

Uriah straightened up, holding the bloodied scalpel in his fingers and opened his mouth as if he were about to ask Enoch a question.

The boy cut him off before he could ask it. “Ye left it on the table…remember? Musta cut ‘imself gettin’ up.”

“Did I? ...I must ‘ave, I s’pose…”

xxxXxxx

He didn’t want to risk bringing another corpse back in the presence of his family again so soon, but the feeling of pride and success that had blossomed in his chest had taken weeks to really fade away. The expression on that horrible woman’s face before she fainted stuck in Enoch’s mind and brought a slightly cruel sneer to his face every time he thought of it. She had deserved the shock after thinking she was so much better than they were.

Since the incident, O’Connor’s Funerals had implemented a much more thorough process of ensuring the person they were about to embalm was in fact dead. Of course, they were often already in the process of rigor mortis but nevertheless, before any blood was drained, someone would check twice more for a pulse. This was a duty that more often than not fell to Enoch, much to his quiet amusement.

As the weeks wore into months, Enoch resumed his occasional midnight exploits to the mortuary and excursions in the middle of the night to find hearts to use. After several experimental attempts, he discovered that using several smaller hearts produced a very similar effect strong enough to bring back a human for a minute or two. It wasn’t nearly as powerful, but it would do when he couldn’t get his hands on pigs or cows.

One of the corpses had been that of a young man who could not even have been twenty yet and had drowned in the Thames. He had been the more accepting victim that Enoch had successfully resurrected and had quite willingly struck up a strange conversation with Enoch about what it had felt like. He liked it where he was now, he had said, a comment which had both intrigued and disgusted the younger boy.

With October came Faith’s third birthday. Like many families in their social class, birthdays were small affairs that did not often extend beyond family unless the money was available to cater for more.

“There she is!” Uriah bellowed loudly as the door of his brother’s house swung closed behind himself and his nephew.

The little girl let out a delighted laugh as she climbed down the last stair and ran on tiny feet towards the front door. “Uncle! Uncle!”  
Uriah laughed and shrugged off his black coat before bending down to scoop up his niece into his arms.

“Enoch…” Enoch pulled off his own coat behind his uncle and cast it into a pile of dirty laundry in the corner of the room before looking over at his father who was motioning for him to follow. They rounded the corner into the small washroom as Owen rolled up his sleeves to wash his arms.  
“I don’t wanna see ye keepin’ ta yourself tonight, Enoch.” He said as he leaned over the basin and ran the tap of cold water.

Enoch sighed from his position leaning in the doorway and rolled his eyes when he thought his father wasn’t looking. Unfortunately, he had glanced in the cracked mirror just in time to see it and turned around with a raised eyebrow to stare his son down. Enoch’s stubbornness had definitely come from the O’Connor side. “Enoch…” Owen stated again warningly.

The teenager dropped his shoulders and started to roll up his own sleeves to the elbows. “I wasn’t gonna. It’s ‘er birfday, why would I?”

“A ‘yes’, would ‘ave been just fine.” Owen shook his head, but his lip twitched slightly as he shook droplets of water from his hands before drying them on a towel and stepping aside so Enoch could wash up. “But good lad…now ‘urry for tea, alright?”

“Yes.” Enoch mumbled obligingly as his father clapped a hand down on his shoulder.

 

They ate a meal of stew made from leftover beef from Sunday’s supper, and sweet dumplings that was followed by a sugary cake for Faith’s birthday who sat bouncing happily on Valentine’s lap.

Enoch hardly spoke a word unless he was spoken to and spent most of the meal pulling faces across the table at his sister to make her laugh and try to pull faces right back at him.

After the meal, Uriah produced a brown paper parcel which Faith eagerly ripped open to reveal a little new dress for her and squealed “Pwetty!” to anyone who would listen for the next five minutes. Enoch, who hadn’t been able to be excused to his room, sat cross legged by the fire to stoke it as needed, pretending he couldn’t hear the conversation of the adults only a few feet away. Uriah had lit up his pipe and slouched comfortably in a chair across from his brother and sister in law who had both lowered their tones and cast occasional glances over at their children.  
Faith had begun jumping at Enoch’s back and clawing at his shoulders as she tried to climb him. The boy couldn’t help but smile to himself until eventually he caught her arms and dragged her gently over his shoulder to plop into his lap.  
“Watcha doin’, ey? …I got somefin’ for ye, too…”

“Owen…” Valentine nudged her husband from where she sat on the arm of his chair and nodded over to the fireplace.   
Both Owen and Uriah turned to look and Uriah chuckled around his pipe as Owen raised a surprised eyebrow at the unexpected sight.

From somewhere on his person Enoch had produced what seemed to be a doll with bendable limbs about the size of his outstretched hand and was holding it out to Faith who was looking at it in delight.   
“Well I’ll be…” Owen muttered as he watched his son being surprisingly generous, “When’d ‘e ever get ‘old of that?”

“I made it.” Enoch said loudly and looked over towards his parents, making it clear to them that he could hear every word they were saying. “That’s what I’ve been doin’ upstairs.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. He had certainly made the doll upstairs with Faith in mind. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

“Enoch, that’s very sweet o’ye.” Valentine beamed at her son. It warmed her heart to see how good Enoch was with his little sister, even if the house was as far as his good will extended.

Enoch’s ears went pink and he muttered something under his breath and turned back to Faith who had grabbed the doll and was walking it across his leg. Leaning forward, he whispered quietly enough that only she would be able to hear. “Maybe I’ll make ‘im dance for ye sometime. Shhh…”

“See? Nofin’ wrong with the boy, Val.” Uriah said, letting out a long puff of pipe smoke and mindful of keeping his voice low enough so Enoch wouldn’t hear them. “Just needs mates is all. Not that easy to make in our line’a work right, Owen? But e’s good at what we do.”

“’E ‘ad an ‘ard time at school, never made none. I wish ‘e would…” Valentine’s gaze left her children and drifted back to her brother in law.

“I don’t know...sometimes I don’t fink that’s all it is…” Owen answered just as quietly and exchanged a glance with his wife who forced a little smile and pushed back a strand of her greying hair.

“It’s not all’a time…there’s just somefink strange sometimes is all.”

“Oh ‘e’s a young man now. E’ll grow outta it.”

“You don’t live ‘ere, Uriah.”

xxxXxxx

December came and went and with it, Enoch’s sixteenth birthday before Christmas. He was old enough now to work unsupervised for the whole day if his father chose, and did one day when his parents went out of the city and didn’t return until suppertime. To commemorate that, his present had been a proper undertaker’s black coat and hat. While the hat had belonged to his father, the coat was the newest piece of clothing he’d had since he was a small child.

He was shooting upwards as quickly as growing boys did and had in the last few months of the year before it trickled over into 1909, seemed to have shot up to his father’s height. Though reasonably tall and lean, he was filling out quite well built with broad shoulders from digging graves and carrying coffins.

Enoch’s eyes drifted around the park from his seat on a low bench. Around him young children laughed and threw snowballs that were half dirty slush at each other. He blew out warm air into cupped hands and rubbed them together furiously before stuffing them back into his pockets. He had come out here to be by himself, and perhaps to find some freezing pigeon to put out of its misery later. His blue eyes drifted away from the kids shouting across the path from him and instead rested on a group of pretty girls bundled up in their hats, stockings and long coats who were laughing at some joke not far from him. Enoch hardly realised he’d been staring until one of the girls nudged her friend and she looked over at him. She was very pretty, he vaguely noted, with auburn curls that stuck out from under her hat and large green eyes which stood out against her light skin. She smiled at him and he noticed she had a dimple in her cheek as she did. He raised an eyebrow in response and for just a moment his lips actually started to twitch upwards.  
But as quickly as it had come, any expression vanished from his face when she scoffed, rolled her lovely eyes and burst out laughing with her friends. Almost as a single unit, the three girls turned on their heels and walked away chattering.   
Enoch’s deadpan expression turned just as quickly into a scowl as they walked away. He didn’t really care what they thought of him, and he wasn’t really surprised but the look of disdain on the faces of the girls had stung just a little bit.  
He sighed out a breath and watched it mist in the winter air before he pushed himself up and started to walk in the opposite direction. His boots crunched the snow and twigs underfoot as he marched towards the gates of the park.   
“-in the Boer War, you know…” A snatch of conversation between two men caught his ear as he passed a rather rotund gentleman and a younger man, not much older than Enoch was. Had they not been going in the opposite direction, Enoch may even have gone out of his way to listen in.

Though content with the funeral service that he knew like the back of his own hands, Enoch wanted to be a soldier. Not only that, but he wanted to be a general. Sometimes he would see army men in the streets, trickling out of pubs in the evening or talking loudly outdoors about the British Army’s victories in exotic places like India and South Africa. The idea of having his own rifle or bayonet and learning how to defeat the enemy intrigued Enoch almost as much as death itself did, even if the two so often went hand in hand. He had told himself for years that when he was old enough he would leave home and join King Edward’s army. Enoch was sure he could be unstoppable with his talents. After all, an army at his command who would not stay dead if shot down? He’d like to see any enemy of Britain come up against that.

So intrigued was he by the idea that it became a favourite game of his to create several homunculi and make them battle each other in small groups of two or three wielding nails or splinters of wood. One particularly infamous battle, the Battle of the Bedsheets, had ended in a brutal beheading of one little commander, distinguishable from his troops only by the pin Enoch had stabbed into the clay chest.


	7. March-July 1909

** March-July 1909 **

Enoch’s late night conversations with the dead happened at least once and more often than not twice, a week by the time March 1909 came around.  It was almost a hunger that grew in Enoch every time he used his power, to repeat it. But even six months after the first time he’d done it, it had never brought as much pride and satisfaction as it had done right under his father’s nose. So he resolved to do it again.

Enoch had taken up the habit of preserving the grisly organs in jars of formaldehyde and pickling solution and keeping them hidden in his room with his homunculi instead of the funeral parlour to reduce the chance of discovery. Enough time had passed that Enoch was confident that suspicion would not fall on him if he were to do it again, after all, it would seem too fantastical to believe that a teenager could have brought a dead person back to life it had been hard enough to comprehend for himself when he’d first discovered it.

It was the first business the O’Connors had had in over a week when they were hired to oversee the funeral arrangements for a young worker who had fallen dead of a malignant tumour. The funeral business, of all businesses, was growing to be a competitive market as more and more began to open doors throughout London. Enoch and his mother had both overheard a heated discussion only days previous between Owen and Uriah about dropping their rates. One which Owen had come out victorious in arguing that while Uriah did not have a family to support, he had two children and a wife to provide for and couldn’t afford to drop his prices any further. As the elder brother, he stood his ground to make the executive decision for the partnership.  
So when a grieving family came to their doors after the death of their twenty-two year old son, Uriah and Owen had gone to every inconvenience to provide as smooth a service as they were able.

Enoch saw none of this. The possible repercussions of his actions did not even enter his head as the door closed behind the young widow and her in-laws as they trudged out into the gloomy afternoon.

“Right then…straight on it.” Uriah clapped his hands as he closed the door and crossed the room in long strides to wave his hand in front of Enoch’s face who had been staring off into space. “Enoch, look alive...I know, ye can’t ‘elp it.” He laughed at his own joke which only earned a groan from his nephew as he pushed himself off the stool in the corner where he had been sitting for the last hour.

“You’re in ‘igh spirits, Uriah.” Owen looked up from where he stood beside the body and smirked over at his brother in amusement.

“Why shouldn’ I be? First customer in a week…should celebrate it.”

“Business ain’t _that_ bad…Enoch, come and take over ‘ere.”

Enoch shook his head to himself at the conversation and his uncle’s ever cheery sarcasm as he crossed the room to take his father’s position at the cadaver. He had only had minutes to work out the logistics of what he was about to attempt and it relied largely on not being watched.   
The scalpel felt cool in his hand as he picked it up and began to silently make the necessary incisions to insert the tubes and syringes to pump the body with fluid. The man had been dead for a minimum of twelve hours judging by the coagulated blood that would not flow freely from any cuts he made. That was a point in Enoch’s favour and would help to hide evidence of foul play a lot easier. He could cover up the evidence from resurrections he performed by cover of night easily enough and hadn’t been discovered yet apart from one occasion when his father had commented on a peculiar cut.

It was a full hour into the embalming procedure when Enoch got his chance. Uriah had stepped outside for a few minutes to light his pipe and his father had disappeared into the back of the shop to check the coffin for sizing. The body had been connected now with rubber tubes and needles to a large industrial pump that steadily worked to fill and inflate the body with embalming fluid to replace the blood. Enoch was left massaging the joints and limbs to ensure an even distribution when he seized his opportunity.

One hand slipped into his pocket and closed around the dry pig’s heart he had concealed there as clear fluid ran out of the dead man’s side when Enoch forced his other hand inside to grope around for the heart. He had only just felt the familiar lurch inside the dead chest as its heart began to beat before he had to pull his hand free and hurry towards the other side of the shop when the office door creaked on its hinges and his father reappeared.

“Enoch, why aren’t y-”

“I needed a drink.” Enoch cut his father off from his position at the far end of the room holding a cup in his free hand and trying to appear as casual as he could with his other hand planted firmly in his pocket.

No sooner had his father approached the corpse and touched one long finger to its shoulder than it shot rigidly uprightly and stared at Owen O’Connor.

Both the dead and the living man appeared as terrified as the other. All colour drained from Owen’s face so rapidly that he closely resembled the corpse for a moment as they both suddenly shouted in shock.

“What’s goi-bloody ‘ell!” The door clattered open with a bang as Uriah stormed in at the noise and another softer thump sounded as his pipe hit the wooden floor with a shower of singeing tobacco. He staggered backwards so violently his back connected hard with the door and nearly sent him falling to the floor while Owen was swaying unsteadily on his feet as he stumbled backwards.

That was enough. Enoch slackened his hold on the heart in his pocket and let it drop to the bottom of the fabric as he broke the connection that kept the two hearts beating. As suddenly as it had sat up, the body went limp and with a final low groan, collapsed forward on itself and left one limp arm hanging heavily off the table.

xxxXxxx

From that day on, Uriah and Owen took new precautions between them. After so many years in the trade, they had for the first time come up against something neither of them could explain. Whilst Enoch and one of the men set about embalming the body, the other would stand close by the corpse’ head with a fire poker or a block of wood held ready just in case.

This amused Enoch more than anything and he had been unable to hold back a laugh the first time his uncle had appeared warily holding a heavy pot as if he were ready to smash the already dead man over the head with it.   
“What’s that s’posed ta do if ‘e’s dead already?”

“Buy us time…”

“Don’t fink ‘e’ll be that fast...”

“Well ‘ow do you explain it then, Enoch? Open ta ideas ‘ere, mate…”

Enoch just scoffed and shook his head, choosing rather to evade the question and pretend that it was his uncle being the irrational one.

Enoch’s luck did not begin to change for another few months on one of what he had taken to calling his supply trips.

It was an unusually warm summer night in June, so much so that Enoch was sweating beneath his long coat and his cap pulled low over his head was bothering him more than ever in the dark. He only wore them to carry the spoils of his expedition and hide his face better to anyone who might catch him hurrying down a street.   
He’d certainly been seen before, running out of sight into shortcuts he knew well, though was sure he’d never been recognised. Besides, London was full of thieves trying to burgle houses in the night, he was hardly out of place.

The stench reached him before the sight as he cut through someone’s tiny makeshift stable between alleyways. It was less of a stable and more of a poor tin shelter held up flimsily with wooden beams and posts just wide enough to house a thin horse. The smell was terrible and the blood in the air was almost tangible as he carefully picked his way over piles of manure and promptly stumbled.

Biting back a curse, Enoch caught himself on his hands and knees on the dirty ground. His hand had landed in something wet and he didn’t need to see it to know what it was as his eyes fell on the large black shape he had fallen over. The horse lay motionless on the ground, its four legs splayed at awkward angles and its formally grey fur was drenched in scarlet blood. Even Enoch gagged at the sight and pulled the collar of his coat up over his nose against the smell. The poor creature looked old and thin and probably would have been on death’s door anyway were it not for the claw like gashes that had almost torn it in two.   
Enoch couldn’t even begin to think what could have caused that injury. There were few enough animals in the city as it were, let alone anything wild or large enough to have tried to eat a horse. Unless something had escaped from a zoo…but that was hardly likely.

He wondered if he could bring it back, but for once hesitated at the thought of trying. He had failed before, when a corpse was too mangled to revive, and how much pain would the miserable creature be in if he did? That was cruel even by Enoch’s low standards. As he stared at the gashes, the boy was filled with a peculiar sense of sudden dread that he couldn’t explain and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. It took a lot to disturb Enoch O’Connor.

Partially in an effort to dissuade the unsettling feeling that had suddenly overcome him, Enoch made his move. The thing was dead anyway. He would never have killed such a large animal in cold blood but there was no harm in taking what it had no use for anymore.  
He pulled a knife from his pocket and moved beside the horse’s stomach. There was little need for the knife at all, the job had been thoroughly done anyway by whatever had killed it. Crouching on the balls of his feet, Enoch rolled up his sleeves and drew in a long breath before reaching inside the corpse. It took several full minutes before he finally found the heart inside and was mildly surprised to find it still completely intact as he pulled his hands free and held it up to the light. To the light?

“Move and I’ll kill yeh.”

Enoch’s blood ran cold and he stayed perfectly still where he crouched. Around him flooded the flickering light of a lantern against his back. Glancing down at the shadow cast beside him over the glistening neck of the horse he saw the shape of a pitchfork he was sure was being held close to his back. Paralysing fear shot down his spine as his imagination ran wild and he imagined he could feel the prongs poking his back.

“What’ve ye done to my horse?”

The question was low and measured, strangely calm for a man who had just found his horse butchered behind his house. But when Enoch didn’t answer he really did feel the pitchfork prod his back and sucked in a breath in response.   
“Answer me or I’ll have you in jail ‘fore you can blink!”

If he hadn’t already been paralysed with fear, Enoch would have been now. He knew that voice. Had heard that voice many times working in a funeral parlour. Of all houses to be caught at, it would have to be a police officer.  
“I didn’t.” He spoke slowly, and for the first time in his sixteen years made a conscious effort to enunciate his words to try and disguise his very Cockney accent and his voice. It didn’t work very well and only resulted in adding a strange slur to his voice. “I didn’t kill it. Wasn’t me.”

“Hands up then.”

When Enoch still didn’t move, he felt the fork poke his hand again threateningly and the deep tones of the policeman shout behind him. “Now!”

There was nothing for it. He couldn’t run and jump the fence without being caught, the man was too close to him. If he resisted, he’d either be run through or seized and found out anyway. Maybe he could hide his identity a little longer this way. Slowly, Enoch dropped his head down towards his chest and raised both hands drenched in blood up to the elbows.  
“I didn’t kill it.”   
The evidence against him was damning, he wasn’t naïve enough to expect anyone to believe him in these circumstances. He had left his bloodied knife on top of the body and in his right hand, as he raised it, was the animal’s heart large, red and unmistakeable.

He closed his eyes and waited, his breaths beginning to come short and fast in his sheer panic as it grew by the second. He heard the policeman behind him let out a disgusted groan and a moment later the fork prodded his back harder and the voice became louder, more aggressive.  
“Turn around now! Now!”

It was turn around or die here. Show his face or be run through and as dead as the horse at his feet.  
The boy kept his hands raised defencelessly, still holding the heart and slowly started to push himself to his feet, turning as slowly as he possibly dared as he did so.

The light fell over his face, though it was still partly cloaked by his peaked cap. It felt like fire, harsh, hot and damning. His skin, already deathly made had been made all the more ghostlike in his fear and coupled with the circles ringing his eyes made darker by the shadow of his cap, he looked altogether skeletal.

“Demon!”

Of all things that Enoch had been expecting to happen, his captor to stagger backwards and lose his ground was not one of them. But he didn’t think twice about it and seized his chance to run. His long legs leapt over the dead horse and scrambled over the fence on the other side of the makeshift shelter in seconds. He landed hard on his shoulder on the pavement but didn’t stop to dwell on the pain as he scrambled to his feet and bolted as fast as he could.

Enoch didn’t stop until he reached the docks by the river. His sides burned painfully with the exertion and his face that had moments ago been deathly white flushed hot. He dropped to his knees at the edge of the Thames exhausted and sat back on his heels. Demon. The superstitious policeman had called him a demon. Enoch knew very well that he didn’t look normal, at best he looked unhealthy, but he didn’t think he was that strange. But he was covered in blood and was still holding the horse’s heart in his hand, he had to give the man that much, and it had distracted him suitably enough to allow Enoch to escape.  
He looked down at his hand, still curled around the heart that had caused him all the trouble. He had been too tempted by opportunity when he could have simply continued on to the slaughterhouse. He’d never been caught there before.   
His expression soured and before he really knew what he was doing, Enoch had hurled the organ into the river. He would go back home empty handed with enough to worry about without thinking about hiding another heart.

The grisly sight of the horse seemed branded to his eyelids as he closed his eyes and look long breaths to calm himself down a little. He still couldn’t explain the peculiar sense of dread he had felt that seemed to touch him to his core.

Enoch sighed and shrugged off his coat that was now filthy with dirt and blood and cast it aside. He didn’t want to have to explain its condition to his mother. Leaning forward over the water, he bent to wash his arms in the filth that was the Thames. Though murky and disgusting the water was, the mood still cast a reflection on the surface and as he scrubbed his arms free of blood, Enoch’s eyes wandered to his wavery face reflected back at him. Had he been recognised? Did the man who he was and if not, would there be drawings of him around the city in the next day or so? How long would it be before his secret really was out? Enoch wasn’t even sure if he’d rather be known as a livestock killer than what he really was.  
Enoch stared at his pale face reflected in the water and then down at his hands and not for the first time wondered, who exactly was he?

xxxXxxx

“My son didn’t so much as leave ‘is room last night, I’ll ‘ave you know and ‘e ain’t no ‘orse killer either.” Valentine O’Connor drew herself up to her thoroughly unimposing full height and stared down the policeman at her door indignantly. Why this man would ever think that Enoch would have been trespassing on his property in the middle of the night, she didn’t understand and was not going to have such horrible accusations against her family.

“M’am, I’d just like to have a word with your husband, I did not say any such thing about horse killing-”

“I saw the notice meself this mornin’, don’t you be finkin’ Enoch done it. ‘E’s a good boy.”

“I have no doubt, Mrs. O’Connor…” The constable sighed and impatiently tapped his foot on the doorstep as he craned his neck to try and see into the small house. “If I may just speak with your husb-”

“Valentine? What’s going on?”

The woman turned on her heel as her husband suddenly appeared at her shoulder adjusting his bracers over his white shirt and frowning slightly at the sight of the constable.  
“Mornin’, Constable…my services required today?”

“That’s not why I’ve come, Mr. O’Connor, you see-”

“They fink Enoch was trespassin’ last night.” Valentine interrupted as her desire to defend her son overcame her desire to be polite.

“What?”

“With all due respect, I never said any such thing. One of our officers reported a disturbance in the early hours of this morning. One of his horses was killed.”

“What’s that gotta do wiv my son?” Owen snapped bluntly and squared his jaw. His hands fell from the clasp of his bracers and crossed over his lean chest as he looked between his wife and the chief constable.

From within the pocket of his black trenchcoat, Constable Chalmers drew a folded piece of paper and handed it over to the undertaker. “This is the description he gave of the boy he caught in the act. He ran away before he could be apprehended. I’m simply asking if you know where your son was early this morning and if he matches this description. Your cooperation will be much appreciated, we can’t have a lads running around killing people’s animals.”

Owen frowned and glanced down at his wife who was looking quite fiercely back at him as if daring him to confirm the description as he unfolded the paper.   
The artist’s impression was, to Owen’s quiet relief, quite vague. The young man sketched in pencil roughly was wearing a hat and there were few distinctive features that could confirm whether it was Enoch or not. However, the one feature that to Owen’s dismay fit Enoch very well was the eyes. They had been drawn with dark circles surrounding them like a mask. But if whoever it was had been wearing a hat, Owen tried to reason with himself, surely anyone could have appeared that way in the right light.

He handed the paper back and shook his head firmly before leaning one hand on the old doorframe.  
“Can’t be my son. ‘E didn’ leave ‘is room and ‘e sure as ‘ell wouldn’t kill any ‘orses. In our profession we don’t kill anyfin ourselves.”

The constable looked less than satisfied as he tucked the picture back into his pocket and looked between the couple who wore very similar expressions of indignation now. “…Thank you…Mr. O’Connor. Your son wouldn’t be available now, would he?”

“‘E’s washin’ up. We ‘ave a job ta do this mornin’.” Owen said immediately, and truthfully as he’d just made sure that Enoch was indeed cleaning up for the funeral. “I know my boy and that picture ain’t of ‘im.”

xxxXxxx

Enoch felt watched. He had seen the pictures of himself that had been scattered around and even saw the suspicion in his own father’s eyes when they worked together. But it was more than that.  He could be in a crowd of people where surely at least one person was looking at him quite naturally and yet feel the hair rise on the back of his neck  when he was left alone walking or even in the funeral parlour.

He hadn’t tried to use any hearts bigger than that of a dog since his failed attempt to find more and was only satisfying the urge to use his power through resurrecting stupid pigeons that smashed into the windows or making homunculi in the security of his room. He felt stifled, like he suddenly could no longer breathe in the smoggy air he’d grown up in. As competition in their business continued to rise, and word spread about the O’Connor’s recent history, income suffered. What had formally been a thriving funeral trade, and the leading one in this part of London, had dwindled to one that people avoided if they could.

Whole days passed by when Enoch would only emerge from his room for meals and when his sister would come running along the landing and knock her little hand on his door.   
It felt better to share his secrets with Faith, even if she wasn’t even four years old yet. She was the one person in the world Enoch didn’t feel the need to hide from like a coward. Behind the backs of their parents in corners of the house he would make his homunculi dance and even juggle bottle caps and stones for her benefit as long as she understood what keeping a secret meant.

Enoch had been left alone with her when their mother stepped out to the markets. He wasn’t needed in the funeral parlour today, and even Uriah had taken the day off to go out of the city during the lack of business brought their way.

Enoch sighed and tossed the crust of his slice of bread out of the kitchen window to the birds and rats outside and left the window open to let a breeze into the warm house.

“Enoch, Enoch, do it?” Faith came running through the kitchen doorway just as Enoch was stepping through in the other direction. He barely caught himself from stumbling over her and reached down to ruffle her blonde curls on the way past.

“Not now, Faith. I got fings ta do.”

“Please? Please?” The little girl whined, running along behind her brother as he sidled towards the stairs.

Enoch sighed and stopped with one foot on the creaking stairs. He raised his eyebrows and stared down at her as she started to tug on his trouser leg and stared imploringly up at him. He didn’t really have anything important he wanted to do. He only wanted to take advantage of not being badgered to come out of his room.

“Fine…come on then.” The young man shook his head and smiled. Stepping off the stair he crouched in front of his sister and held out his arms behind him. Faith smiled happily as she got her way and eagerly climbed onto her back, wrapping her arms around his neck as Enoch picked her up.

He took the stairs two at a time and they creaked under his weight as he carried Faith up to the second floor landing and to his bedroom door where he set her down on her feet and gave her a gentle shove down the hall. “Go get it and I’ll do it for ye.”

The door swung open at his push and Enoch rubbed the back of his neck where his curly hair was tickling the nape it just reached at the back. He nudged aside the stool drawn out from the little table by the wall and sat on its surface instead. Instinctively his eyes were drawn to the floorboards beneath his bed across the small space and only snapped out of it when Faith’s feet pattered down the wooden floor and into his room.

In her arms she clutched the doll he had given her for her last birthday which now wore a simple dress that their mother had made. Eagerly she handed it over to her brother who had dropped to his knees on the floor to be level with her.   
“Right…’ere you go then…”

Enoch smiled in amusement at his sister’s excited face as he pressed his thumb firmly to the middle of the doll where the heart of a mouse was concealed. His hand tingled and his thumb throbbed as energy rushed through it and into the doll which jerked in his hand and started to struggle to be free.

Faith laughed and looked from the doll to her big brother with a look of such wonderment and adoration that it warmed even his cool heart.  Other might call him a freak and a demon if they knew what he really did, but Faith, naïve, innocent little Faith, saw nothing but the best in him. Enoch smiled a wide, genuine smile that lit up his entire face and let the doll go where it started to twirl and skip in her new attire around the little girl.

“…’old on a minute…” Enoch smirked and moved away from Faith. He turned his back as he pushed aside his bed and pried up the loose floorboards to find one of his little clay men. Trying to move as fast as possible to avoid Faith getting curious and seeing exactly what he had to do, Enoch pulled from a jar a little mouse hard and pried and pushed until the clay surrounded it.   
He dropped the inanimate homunculus into his lap and replaced the floorboard before turning around and sitting cross legged in front of his sister. He pressed his thumb again to the thumb of the clay man which leapt to life just as they always did.

Enoch whistled, not unlike calling a dog to him, and the little clay soldier stood at attention as its kindred ran over from Faith to join him.   
“Well, go on.” Enoch said, raising an eyebrow and prodded his newest homunculus which seemed to get the message and performed a comical sort of bow to Faith’s doll.  
Before their matching blue eyes they’d inherited from their mother, the two dolls joined hands and started to dance a clumsy little dance around the small space of Enoch’s room as if they were at a party of their own.

“You’ll get ta dance when ye big enough too, Faith.”

Faith was so entranced by the clumsily dancing dolls that she pushed herself to her feet and started to try to copy them. Enoch burst out laughing at the sight as she spun on the spot and beamed delightedly at what she only knew of as toys.

For a few minutes Enoch could forget any money troubles they were starting to have and any horrible feelings of being watched wherever he went. He could pretend that he didn’t know his father was doubting his innocence of killing that horse and that he was at risk of being found out. For a few minutes, Enoch could be happy that at least he made his sister smile, that there was some good in his gift beyond selfish amusement.

Until…

“What the bloody ‘ell is that?”


	8. 21st July 1909

** 21st July 1909 **

“What the bloody ‘ell is that?”

Enoch’s smile vanished immediately and Faith stopped her twirling as both their heads snapped up towards the open bedroom door. In the fun they’d been having, no one had noticed footsteps on the stairs and the floor creaking under shoes that would have announced their father’s approach. Now he stood in the doorway, his eyes glued on the dolls that moved like marionettes independent of their strings and his jaw slightly agape at the sight.

Even Faith who couldn’t really understand why her father seeing Enoch’s tricks could be a bad thing, looked stricken as if she’d been caught doing something naughty. Enoch on the other hand, might have been caught with a rifle in his hand he looked so guilty.

The silence hung heavy in the air for several long moments, broken only by the patter of little clay feet on the wooden floor.

“What…” Owen began again when no one moved or spoke save the toys he was still staring at, “…are they?”

“Puppets?” Enoch attempted, lamely, even while the clay figures were clearly still moving without strings or wires.

“My doll.” Faith chimed in and reached out to pick up her toy which squirmed in her small hands and climbed onto her shoulders. Enoch groaned at this and reached out to seize the second one before it could run far away. With a firm press to its chest, the homunculus fell lifeless in his hands again.

If he hadn’t been alarmed enough watching what should have been inanimate dolls dancing of their own accord, seeing one climb over his daughter made Owen take a sudden step backwards out of the doorway and stare at his son like he’d never seen Enoch before.  
“What ‘ave you done? ‘Ow did you do that? Put that down, Faith. Now.”

“Nofin’…I didn’ do nofin’…it’s ‘armless.” Enoch shrank back slightly when his father took a few steps into the room towards them and Faith clung tighter to her doll.

“It’s mine…”The girl whimpered, staring up at her father with wide blue eyes as he came closer and burst into tears as he made to grab the doll that was too fast for him and dropped off of Faith’s shoulder.

“Don’t! I’ll stop it…” Enoch snapped out of his frozen position and scrambled to catch the fleeing homunculus before his father could get to it first. His hands closed around the struggling creature and he squeezed hard until the life left the little heart inside and it fell lifeless again.  
“Faith...it’s okay…”

Slowly, Enoch pushed himself to his feet after handing the now limp doll back to his sister who hugged it to her little body and ran to the side of the room. Tears glistened in her eyes as she stared between her brother and her father suddenly frightened.

“Dad…”

“You will tell me right now ‘ow the ‘ell you did that…what kinda trick is that?”

Enoch’s heart thundered almost painfully in his chest and he shrank back under his father’s unusually hard stare. The expression on the thin, stubbled face looking back at him was a frightening combination of fear and anger that he’d never seen on his father before.   
“I can’t…I dunno.”

“Enoch Ambrose O’Connor, I don’t wanna ask twice.”

“I don’t know! It just ‘appens!”

“What on earf is goin’ on up ‘ere?!”

The two men were silenced immediately by Valentine’s appearance and both turned to stare at the doorway in unison. She was slightly out of breath after running up the stairs hearing raised voices as soon as she’d entered the house.

“Mama!” Faith whimpered and practically flew into her mother’s skirts.  
Valentine bent down, picked her up and cradled her close as she stared wide eyed at her husband.   
“Owen, what on earf is everyone shoutin’ for? What’s ‘appened? The kids, Owen…”

“That’s why I’m shoutin’. One o’these kids ‘as some explainin’ to do and I don’t fink Faith is-”

“I’m right ‘ere!” Enoch interrupted as he suddenly found his bravery. One hand curled into a fist at his side and trembled slightly in anger that they would still talk about him like he wasn’t there.

“What’s ‘appened?” Valentine insisted and held her daughter closer when both her son and her husband began to raise their voices again.

Owen drew in a long breath and tried to regain control of his temper if only for his young daughter’s sake. “’E does fings…tricks…ya always said somefin’ was strange.”

“I’m still right ‘ere!” Enoch’s ears burned hot. He knew very well that his parents had worried about him for years now, and thought something was strange about him. He’d overheard them talk about him behind his back on more than one occasion but to say they thought he was strange to his face felt much worse than overhearing it. “And they ain’t tricks…”

“Well what are they then?”

“Owen, stop it! Not now…” Valentine pleaded, though her eyes kept returning to Enoch and a flicker of doubt flashed across her face as she looked at him. Owen rarely lost his temper with his family, even since money had become much tighter; he was normally very in control. There had to be a reason he would act that way.

Enoch looked away at the wall and pursed his lips as if he were chewing on words. He said nothing. He didn’t know what he could say. His father would never believe the truth that Enoch couldn’t really explain how he did what he did. Surely the truth would make things much worse.

“Ye’ll stay in ‘ere until ye gonna tell the truth then…” Owen clenched and unclenched his jaw before jerking his head at his wife to leave the room which she did so hesitantly.

As the door closed behind his parents, Enoch lashed out and kicked over his stool so hard it flew into the wall and shook the floor as it landed hard. Pain shot through his foot and he swore loudly, no longer caring if his father overheard when things couldn’t be much worse than they were now.   
The sixteen year old looked down at the floor and glared fiercely at the lifeless clay man lying by his bed. He bent down and picked it up.   
“Stupid fing…all your fault…” He muttered and, with some effort, violently snapped the hard clay in two. He crossed the room to his window, opened it and threw the pieces of the homunculus out and down to the street below.

xxxXxxx

Enoch was not locked in his room, but he could imagine his father sitting in his armchair by the fireplace and watching the staircase for his reappearance. That alone was enough to make want to leave even less. Tell the truth, he’d been told to do. But he had told half the truth. He didn’t know why he could do what he could and why he had to be different to the rest of the world and if he told his parents that he used dead hearts to bring things to life…well that could only make things worse for him.

The sun had almost set, casting its last feeble rays of light through Enoch’s window and over his knees where he had drawn them up to his chest. Leaning against the foot of his bed Enoch clenched and unclenched his fists. Had his father told his mother about him by now? Would she take his word for it and believe without seeing it herself? He loved his family. Didn’t always show it very well, or at all, but of course he cared about them and seeing the fear and the anger on his father’s face when he saw something he did not understand was a moment that had emblazoned itself in Enoch’s mind and would not soon be forgotten.

His stomach growled suddenly, treacherously in his stubbornness to stay in his room and Enoch groaned and dropped his head onto his knees. At almost the same moment there was a soft knock on his door and his mother’s voice came through the wood.   
“Enoch…come an’ eat somefin’…”

Enoch said nothing in reply and looked back down at his hands again. He wanted her to go away, to leave him alone to himself until he knew what to say to his father.   
She knocked again and when he still did not respond, the door opened slightly and he groaned again.

“No.” He muttered stubbornly but looked up when his mother stepped into the room. He could only look her in the face for a moment before his eyes caught sight of her hands twisting her apron so tightly her knuckles were white.

“Tea’s on the table for ye, Enoch. Come down.”

“’E told me not to.” The boy murmured and dropped his eyes back to the loose skirting board on the wall. He didn’t want to see the same look of fear on his mother’s face as had been on his father’s.

“Enoch Ambrose…”

“Stop middle namin’ me…”

“Your father ain’t gonna stop you eatin’, ‘e’ll ‘ave me ta deal wiv if ‘e does.” Valentine sighed and walked closer to her brooding son. Her worn hands slowly uncurled from where she’d been nervously tearing at the fabric of her apron. “I want you ta come down an’ eat. Come on…”

“What did ‘e tell you?” Enoch shifted uncomfortably and kept his eyes away from his mother, half afraid to hear the answer.

But Valentine didn’t answer him, she just reached down and hesitantly touched his shoulder with just her fingertips before walking back towards the door. “Come an’ eat now…”

He really didn’t want to go downstairs and face his father now but his growling stomach got the better of Enoch and a minute after his mother left the room he slowly got to his feet. His stiff joints cracked as he moved and stretched them back into use after over an hour of keeping the same position. His shirt hung untucked, creased and slightly dirty and his bracers hung from his trousers against either leg uselessly.

Enoch left his room and walked out onto the landing quietly. He stared down from the top of the stairs and saw the shadow of his father crossing the floor below before he came into view and looked back up at Enoch. Enoch averted his eyes and slowly came down the stairs. He kept his head down and didn’t even glance at his father as he walked past him towards the kitchen where his mother had left his small portion of meat pie and lumpy mashed potatoes at the table for him.

His fist tightened on his fork and Enoch forced himself to swallow the last bite of his dinner past the growing lump in his throat. He stood up and kicked out his chair, leaving his empty plate at the table as he turned and tried to march right back up the stairs.

“Enoch.”

The boy halted with one foot on the first stair much as he had done hours ago when Faith insisted he make her doll come alive for her. This time however his fist closed at his side and shook with suppressed emotion as he turned his head to face his father again.

“Care ta do some explainin’?”

“No. You wouldn’t believe it.” Enoch said, much stronger than he felt as he looked defiantly at his father.

“I fink yeh’ll find me a little more open minded after that.” Owen’s expression almost mirrored his son’s as he pointed an accusatory finger up the stairs where he’d witnessed what he couldn’t quite explain. “I’m your father, Enoch, and ye gonna answer me.”

“Where’s Faith?”

“Gone to bed.”

Enoch looked back up the stairs to see his mother coming back down. He backed up a few steps and stared between both his parents. He felt like a cornered dog ready to either bite or run. His mother hadn’t seen him, but he could tell from the shaking of her hands and the way she looked at him like he wasn’t quite there that she believed her husband. He stormed past his father through the doorway and stopped facing the cold fireplace seldom used in the summertime.

“I don’t wanna ‘ave ta ask again…what the ‘ell was I lookin’ at up there? What kinda trick was that?”

“I told ye…no trick. I fought you said ye’d believe me?” Enoch muttered and looked over his shoulder at his parents who still stood in the doorway away from him.

“Don’ talk back to me now, Enoch.” Owen snapped, “If ye can’t tell me ‘ow you did it-”

Despite his father’s warning tone, Enoch retorted and snapped right back. His fist shook at his side and colour flooded his ears. “I can’t! I don’ _know_ why!”

“Yeh could ‘ave ‘urt your sister, what the ‘ell ‘ave you been playin’ at if you don’t know what it is?”

The accusation stung like a bee and Enoch stared wide eyed at his father, momentarily taken aback by the idea he’d ever hurt Faith.

“They’re ‘armless! They only do what I want ‘em to.” Granted the homunculi could be vicious when he wanted them to be, he made them fight after all, but only when he ordered them do it. “I…made ‘em…there was no trick…just me.”

Owen took a few steps into the room closer to his son whose pale face was illuminated by the light of the oil lamps on the mantelpiece. Enoch’s face was twisted into something between a grimace and a scowl and he stepped back while Owen stepped forward.  
“Just you?”

Enoch nodded stiffly and held his hands up, palms out, as he backed into the mantelpiece and felt the wooden beam against the back of his shoulders.

The tension in the air was so thick it was almost tangible as the two O’Connor men stared at each other. Brown eyes stared into blue as the teenager closely resembled an animal caught and waiting for the chance to flee.

“If it’s just you then do it again…” Owen pointed off to the left and Enoch glanced over to see one of Faith’s toys, a little wooden horse with only three legs, lying on the floor. He swallowed and stared at his father, shaking his head slowly.

“I can’t…”

“But ye did it before…I watched ye stop it. Why can’t ye do it now?”

“Don’t work like that it needs-” Enoch stopped himself and clenched his jaw before he could reveal the most damning part of all. If he admitted now that he used animal hearts…he’d have nothing at all to hide behind and his father would know for sure that it had been him caught with that dead horse. “It only works wiv certain fings…I can’t…”

“Enoch…” Owen’s voice was low and full of nothing but a suspicion which genuinely scared Enoch enough to look over at his mother for help. “Enoch…what ‘ave you been doin’ up there?”

Valentine held a hand over her face as Enoch cast an imploring look at her. For the first time since he was a little boy, Enoch actually looked like a child who needed his mother again. But she could do nothing. She was just as afraid to step in on his behalf as he looked, but her fear was not entirely of her husband’s anger. Some part of her that she hated for it was afraid of Enoch himself.

“Answer me, boy.”

Enoch’s hands shook as he lowered them and looked his father in the eye. He felt trapped, like this was just a shell and the real Enoch was screaming inside to be let out. “Only what I ‘ave to…”  
He swallowed his fear and powered forward, past his father and around his mother through the doorway. Before either of his parents could do more than call after him to stop, Enoch had thundered back up the stairs and slammed the door to his bedroom.

He heard his father’s feet on the stairs not far behind him as he slammed the door and wedged the wooden stool beneath the handle to prevent it turning.

“We weren’t finished, Enoch!”

“Well I am!” Enoch shouted through the door and backed up towards the back wall as he watched the handle jiggle vainly. “I can’t ‘elp what I do! Le’me alone!”

There was one, final loud pound of a fist on the wood of the door before the jiggling and the knocking stopped. Enoch’s heart pounded just as hard in his chest as he listened for his parents.   
“This isn’t done, Enoch.” His father’s muffled voice sounded before Enoch heard a long sigh and footsteps retreat down the hallway.

xxxXxxx

What little sleep the sixteen year old got that night was plagued with nightmares. He was surrounded by a sea of faceless people streaming past him as he stood still. They hissed words at him as they passed, “Freak.” “Demon.” “Strange.” Words that echoed in his head and hurt like each one was a stone cast at him. Something twitched in his hand and Enoch looked down to find himself clutching a heart still full of blood which dripped over his hand as it beat. Then the scene would change and he would be back in his home by the fireplace. His family was there. Mother, father, uncle and sister all standing together in the corner well away from him. Even Faith wouldn’t look at him when he came up to them.  He was like a ghost to them until at last, little Faith turned her head to him and smiled. Gone was the happiness that lit up her face and had been replaced with a cold, vicious smile as she flashed long pointed teeth at him.

Enoch woke for the fourth time sweating. He had long since kicked off the covers from his bed and they now lay in a cold tangle on the floor. He looked over at his window and groaned. The sun was just beginning to rise and the buildings and streets were bathed in blueish tinge of approaching dawn. He’d barely slept longer than an hour or two at a time and felt far from rested.   
He sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bed to plant his feet on the cool wooden floor. Across the room, the stool was still wedged beneath his door handle and he was quietly thankful that he’d been left alone for the whole evening and night.

Enoch looked down at his hands and turned them over palm up and then back over again as if he was suddenly compelled to study them.  
He knew very well his father wasn’t going to let it rest until he knew exactly what Enoch was really doing and what he really was. At least what he thought Enoch was. How could he know when the boy wasn’t even sure himself?

A soft, unusual chirping caught Enoch’s ear. It was almost an amphibious sound, like that of a dozen frogs all ribbiting at once and certainly didn’t belong to any of London’s most notoriously common birds, being the pigeon. He rubbed a hand over his face and through his messy hair before looking back over his shoulder at the window.

A small bird had perched right on his windowsill and was trilling away. It was a little bird, smaller than a pigeon but larger than the common sparrow with mottled brown feathers that would have blended well in with the woodwork. Enoch had never seen any little birds like that in the city before.  It didn’t stop it’s low, continuous chirping even when Enoch stood up and walked slowly towards the window. It was looking right at him now, staring right at his eyes with its beady ones.  
Enoch yawned and glared at the bird as its song began to annoy him. He wanted to be alone and in peace and quiet, now this bird had broken the latter and was giving him the peculiar sense that it had specifically flown here for him.  
He rapped hard on the glass right in front of the bird with his fist and to his relief it silenced its chirping, spread its wings and fluttered off again.

“Stupid bird…”

Enoch scoffed and dressed quickly into plain trousers and a faintly discoloured shirt that was almost too small for him. If he could get out of the house before the sun was fully up then he could evade his family for a little longer. He grabbed his cap and pulled it on over his curls before quietly moving the stool from his door and opening it as quietly as he could. Every little squeak of the floorboards and hinges seemed magnified a hundred times though by now he had snuck out of the house when everyone was asleep almost as many times.

His mother would think he’d run away when she saw him missing so early in the morning and truth be told, Enoch had thought about doing so the night before. He had been exposed now, and it was only a matter of time before the whole truth was known. He’d been so afraid of his father at times yesterday that he had expected him to raise his hand, or his belt, more than once. He’d been on the receiving end of that many times in past years, though he had probably deserved it then.

What about Faith? Had they taken the doll off her while he’d been shut up in his room? If they really thought Enoch’s homunculi were dangerous enough to hurt a little girl they might have done so. He could try and explain as much as he liked but there were some things his father would never understand now. That’s why people feared these things. They didn’t understand them. Enoch had control over something that he thought no one else could possibly have. If his father knew just what Enoch needed to do…the heart in the cool box, the raising of the dead, the blood on his clothes, it would all point to the worst for Enoch.

The blue tint of the morning had burst into cool pinks and oranges where the sun was visible between buildings as he walked closer to the river. He was basically alone now, save for washer women beginning to lean out of their windows to hang washing on lines that strung from window to window across alleyways. It made him think of his mother as Enoch looked up at them on his aimless wandering. Even she was plainly afraid and she hadn’t even seen it for herself, perhaps she merely thought Enoch was unstable and mad. Mad? Or a freak who brought dolls to life? He wasn’t sure which label he preferred of the two.

He sat down upon the wall over the Thames and watched the dock workers scurry around below him carrying crates and bricks. Enoch just sat there, staring across the filthy river to the faint outline on the other sight still shrouded in smoke and mist as the sun cracked over the horizon. After almost a full half an hour just swinging his legs idly movement beside him caught his attention and he looked down as a familiar chirping reached his ears.

The little bird that had been perched on his window, or at least one of its fellows, hopped along the bricks near his leg and tilted its little beak up at him.

There was something about the bird, in its eyes perhaps, that held Enoch’s gaze. He knew, although he couldn’t say why he knew, that it was the same bird that had chirped at his window. It fluttered its wings and chirped its long, froglike note at him like it was talking to him. That was ridiculous. It was a bird, just a silly little bird that was following him around.  
“Go away…shoo!” He snapped and flicked his hand at the bird which chirped indignantly but fluttered away again and left Enoch shaking his head after it.


	9. 22nd July 1909

** 22nd July 1909 **

“Oi, watcha doin’ there?”

Enoch looked over his shoulder as the clip clop of horse’s hooves and the grinding of wheels as they came to a stop on the road announced someone’s presence. He groaned at the familiar face and turned away to look back at the river as his uncle jumped down from the wagon.

“Yer up early, Enoch.” Uriah patted the old horse’s neck as he walked around it and over to his nephew sitting on the wall and blatantly ignoring him. “What’re ye doin’?” He rolled his eyes when Enoch still didn’t respond and tapped him on the shoulder, “Ye not in one’a those moods again, are ye?”

“Leave me alone.” Enoch said dryly without turning around. He was quietly relieved that at least it had been his uncle to come across him who had been out of London the day before and didn’t know anything of it.

“Uh nah, come on I’ll give ye a ride ‘ome. We got a job, didn’ ye dad tell ye?”

“I don’t know.”

“Right…alright…now get up, come on.”

Enoch really didn’t want to. He’d been wandering the streets for over an hour and knew that by now his parents would probably have noticed his absence. Would they be worried and think he’d run away? He had to go back, he knew that, even though it was only a little piece of vain hope that kept him thinking that maybe they would accept it eventually if he did.

“Fine…” He muttered and swung his legs over the wall as he pushed himself back up to his feet. Adjusting his cap on his head, Enoch sighed and climbed up into the front of the wagon as Uriah ducked under the horse’s neck, gathered the long reins and hopped up the other side behind him.

“What’re you doin’ out ‘ere so early anyways?” Uriah asked with a raised eyebrow as he clicked the horse into a walk, looking sideways at his nephew who looked even more absent than he usually did. “Your parents even know?”

“I ain’t a little kid, don’t need permission ta go for a walk.” Enoch mumbled and Uriah laughed quietly.  
“So, no then…what’s up wiv you?”

“Ya really wanna know?” Enoch asked dryly and turned on the wooden seat to properly look his uncle in the face for the first time that morning.

“Do I?” Uriah raised an eyebrow and flicked the reins lightly against the horse’s back as he steered the wagon around a corner.

“I can bring fings ta life.” Enoch said in what was the most bluntly honest sentence he could remember speaking for a long time. His face remained an unreadable mask of emotion as he watched his uncle for any reaction.

“Ya what?” Uriah started in such surprise he tugged the horse and wagon to a halt and stared at Enoch like he was trying to decide whether or not he was joking. After several long seconds he laughed loudly and shook his head in disbelief. “Better lose that attitude ‘fore your dad ‘ears it. Don’t try that on ‘im, lad.”

“It’s true.”

“Yeah, yeah…an’ I’m actually the Duke o’ Kent.”

xxxXxxx

Enoch jumped from the wagon as they drew to a halt outside the front door. The horse snorted and huffed out a breath as Enoch passed close to its nose and sucked in a breath through his teeth as he pushed open the door and stuck his head inside.

He almost walked right into his father as he stepped inside and jumped back a step.   
“…I went for a walk…” He muttered, clenching his jaw and looking his father firmly in the eye as if daring him to start the same argument again already. He would tell Uriah, without a doubt.  
But his father, unshaven and half-dressed, said nothing as he looked at Enoch. There was something strangely vague in the man’s expression that did not go unnoticed by Enoch’s uncle standing behind him.

“Owen? D’you forget we ‘ad a job?”

“No…” Even Owen’s voice was strangely quiet and without a word to Enoch he let his son step around him and towards the kitchen to get his breakfast. “Enoch won’t be comin’ today.”

“Why ain’t ‘e comin’? What’s ‘appened?”

Enoch paused inside the kitchen to listen. His eyes were fixed on the bowl of cool porridge and trickle of milk at his place at the table but his attention was on the hall where he heard his father and uncle speaking in hushed tones he couldn’t quite make out. He chanced a glance around the doorway in time to watch his uncle head towards the stairs and his father run a hand through his receding hair and grip a great chunk of it.

His gut twisted unpleasantly as he sank into his chair at the table, tossed his cap onto it, and tried to stomach a few mouthfuls of the disgusting, lumpy porridge. He had barely swallowed a spoonful when he heard someone’s heavy footsteps on the stairs and his uncle’s unmistakeable voice curse loudly.

Enoch didn’t move from his seat for several long minutes. His restless fingers tapped his spoon against the edge of his bowl though he didn’t feel hungry at all enough to finish the breakfast his mother left out for him. It was still early, Faith would probably still be in bed but he hadn’t seen or even heard his mother in the house yet.

He didn’t move until he heard his father in the doorway and slowly looked over his shoulder at him.

The chair scraped against the floorboards as he pushed it back and got to his feet but otherwise made no movement closer to his father.

There was a long moment of tense silence between father and son before Owen spoke in a low, barely measured voice that trembled with some suppressed emotion.   
“You won’t be comin’ into the shop today, Enoch.”

Enoch didn’t need to ask why. He wasn’t entirely surprised that his father no longer wanted him around there but all the same he looked over his father’s shoulder to his uncle who stood in the room beyond. The man whose face had minutes ago been laughing and happy was looking at Enoch with an expression of disgust and fear Enoch had never seen before even when he raised the dead in front of him.

“Look at me when I’m talkin’ ta ya.”

Enoch’s blue eyes snapped back to his father’s face and he clenched his jaw in an effort to resist the retort that tingled at the tip of his tongue.

“You will not leave this ‘ouse ‘til I get back.”

“I what?” Enoch snapped, his eyes wide with shock at his father’s very stern order. “D’you really fink I’m gonna ‘urt someone? It ain’t doin’ no ‘arm! Y’can’t-”

_Smack._

Enoch staggered sideways and whatever he had been about to say was lost on his lips as he stared in shock at his father who was staring at his own hand like he hadn’t really meant to strike with it.

While his son raised trembling fingers to his cheek and stared at him like a frightened dog, Owen swallowed a lump in his throat and stood his ground.  
“I’m yer father, you’ll do as I say. I wouldn’t do this if I fought I ‘ad a choice. You will stay in this ‘ouse ‘til I come back. Do ya understand me?”

“…Yessir.”

“Good.”

Enoch remained rooted to the spot and staring at nothing as his father walked away towards the front door. Uriah looked over at Enoch but seemed to think better of saying anything to him before he followed his brother out the door.  
Only when he heard the front door close did Enoch move. His fingertips traced circles over his cheek where he still felt the sting of his father’s blow. He was stunned, but not entirely surprised. Slowly the hand holding his cheek dropped and curled into a fist as he shook with barely suppressed anger towards his father. All this just because he’d seen Enoch make a few dolls dance around. Or was it? Something had made even Uriah look at him like he was a freak now after laughing with him and thinking he was joking about his abilities.

Enoch wasn’t locked inside. He could just as easily run away now and never come back but something kept him rooted here. He hadn’t seen his mother yet but she had made them breakfast.

Eventually, after full minutes of just standing there in shock, Enoch wandered from the kitchen and stared up at the stairs. Home no longer felt happy and safe for him but more like a guarded cage in which he’d been captive so long he wasn’t sure he wanted to leave.

A sinking feeling filled Enoch and every footstep felt heavy as he started up the stairs. At he reached the landing he drew in a long breath and walked towards his bedroom. The door was open. He had left it closed, he knew that and the feeling of dread grew stronger as he walked towards it.

“No, no, no…” The scene that greeted Enoch was enough to make him step backwards out of the doorway of his own room. A low groan escaped his throat as the boy looked over his bedroom. His bed had been pushed aside and the covers were piled up at the foot where he had left them. The small table and stool had been overturned and his drawers were open like someone had been searching for something. They had found it. His heart sunk to his feet and he immediately understood the strange looks on his father and uncle’s faces as he stared at the torn up floorboards. The insulating straw littered the wooden floor and everything he had so carefully hidden for years was on display before him. Balls of unused clay and homunculi, both completed and half made ones, were strewn around. Worst of all was the jars. The pickled hearts of all sizes were all too visible in their clear jars around the room and knives and scalpels only added to the morbid scene before him.

He wasn’t just a freak who made inanimate things come to life anymore to his parents. He was a killer and a collector of the macabre.

A quiet sobbing that he hadn’t noticed before caught his ears and Enoch snapped his head to the side to find, to his horror, his mother kneeling in the far corner of the room. He had been too distracted by the rest to notice her before but now he looked he saw her almost white hands twisting and tearing her apron as she rocked and hid her face in it. She was crying, and that made Enoch feel worse than he ever had.

“Mum…” He whispered, and his voice came out hoarser than he’d been expecting. “I can…I can explain it…” Could he really though? He’d been asking himself for years why he was the way he was and never had an answer. Was ‘I use dead hearts to bring things to life’ really much better than the alternative? Enoch knew himself that it was, but to his own mother…he wasn’t sure it would be.

Valentine said nothing when her son tried to speak to her but slowly lifted her head to look at him. His cheek was bruising and she could only imagine that Owen must have struck him after all. Now she looked, really looked at Enoch, she saw it all. She saw years of secrets in the dark rings around his eyes, a strange nimbleness in his hands, and something peculiar in the paleness of his skin. She even imagined she saw something frightening in the blue eyes she once thought of as sweet and good. The young man that stood in front of her was not the same boy she had raised anymore in her eyes. He was different. He was strange and the things he must have done made her weep.

“Mum?” He spoke again and his voice finally sounded childlike again. For one moment, just one, Enoch sounded like a little boy who wanted his mother and not like a cold, broody teenager who kept secrets.

“Don’ try to. I seen it all…” Valentine’s voice came out wavering as she leaned back against the wall to support herself as she stood up to face him.

“I didn’…” Enoch swallowed and tried not to let her distance hurt him more than he already was. She had practically flattened herself against the wall and closely resembled the frightened animal he so often felt like now. “I ain’t no killer or nofin’, I swear.”

“’art’s…Enoch. Nofin’ but bloody ‘arts and you wanna tell me you ain’t ‘urtin’ anyone?”

“Animals…rats and fings…” His case was grim at best and Enoch knew deep down that this was it and he wasn’t going to be able to convince her otherwise. “I never ‘urt nofin’ bigger than a sick cat, and never cold blood…” Now that was half a lie but what was one more now when the evidence was damning enough?

Valentine pursed her lips in much the same way Enoch sometimes did when he was trying to hold back some foul word or insult. She kept her back flat to the wall as she edged towards the other side of the room closer to the open door. Something went cold in her blue eyes she shared with both her children and Enoch felt sick at the sight. “’E was right…I didn’ wanna believe ‘im, ya know? Yer dangerous, Enoch.”

“I’m your son, Mum…I’d never ‘urt no one…” He tried, turned on the spot as she edged around him and took a step back. His foot slipped over one of the jars which toppled sideways and rolled across the room towards his mother who scuttled out of the way of it.

“I dunno what you are…but you ain’t my son.”

Enoch’s heart seemed to sink right down through his feet and into the floor. Did she really believe that? She thought he was a freak and immediately the shocked shouts of the policeman echoed in his head again. _Demon_.

“I don’t ‘urt no one…” He tried again and in a desperate attempt to make her believe him he bent down, picked up a jar and started to unscrew the lid. “It ain’t a bad fing, I swear…I can show ye…it’s a good thing.”

“You put that fing down now!”

But Enoch didn’t, he reached inside and pulled out the preserved pig’s heart, watching the solution trickle over his fingers as he held it in one hand and slowly put down the jar. His whole hand tingled with an energy it needed to expel as he curled his fingers around the heart and swallowed.  
“I can’t ‘elp it…it’s ‘o I am…but I ain’t no killer, look.”

Valentine pressed a shaking hand over her mouth as she stood in the doorway of Enoch’s bedroom. She didn’t want to look at the horrible thing in front of her that her own son, if he really was still her son, was holding like it was nothing. Still, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Enoch as he closed his eyes and closed his fingers around the organ. She didn’t miss his hand twitch and the tremor that ran down his arm as he concentrated on something.   
Then it happened. The heart Enoch held in his outstretched hand that had been motionless and dead a moment before, began to beat before her very eyes.

“It’s-it’s...what did ye just do? ‘Ow did-” She couldn’t even finish her sentence as she stared half in fear and half in wonderment at Enoch who had opened his eyes and was looking almost desperately at her.

“I do it wiv the dolls…it’s why I ‘ave em. It’s alive. See? I don’ kill anyfin’ that matters…it’s the opposite, see? I can give it life.”

For one long moment Enoch was hopeful that she believed him and she could see that it wasn’t a bad thing to have. She seemed to hesitate for a few seconds as she stared entranced at the beating heart in his hand. The dull, soft throbbing filled the silence as he waited in hope.

“No one should be able ta do that…no one…”

“Well…obviously I can.” Enoch couldn’t help himself from responding before he lowered his outstretched hand and dropped it limply to his side as the heart still beat within his fingertips. “It’s a good fing…please?”

It happened in less than a minute.

Enoch dropped the still beating heart to the floor and tried to take a step towards his mother, pleading with her to accept him more than he had ever wanted to belong before. At the same time she stepped backwards out of the door and away from him as her fear overcame how desperately she wanted to believe him.   
The jar that had rolled her way and out of the room minutes ago had come to rest at the very top of the stairs and Enoch was the only one to notice it as he ran to the doorway as his mother moved away from him with such a cold expression that looked wrong on her face.

“Mum…”

She hadn’t looked behind her, only felt with a hand out behind her to find the top of the banister as she kept her back to it. Suddenly Enoch saw what was about to happen before it did. Her shoe made contact with the ankle high obstacle that was the jar and no sooner had he shouted she fell backwards.

xxxXxxx

Enoch could do nothing but stare in horror from the top of the staircase at the spot his mother had fallen. She wasn’t moving and he’d heard the sickening crunch of skull hitting the end of the banister when she fell.

“Enoch?”

He spun on the spot and very nearly toppled backwards when he saw Faith rubbing her eyes in the doorway at the far end of the landing. Before his sister could so much as say another word he had run across the landing and swept her up and back into the room.

She laughed and Enoch for once hated to hear it. He set her back down on her feet and knelt down to her level to look her in the eye. “Stay in ‘ere, okay, Faith? I’ll come get ye…just stay in ‘ere…”

The smile vanished from her face and she tilted her head up at him but before she could say anything Enoch ran from the room and pulled the door closed behind him, pleading with anything and everything that she wouldn’t see.

The jar of pickling solution had toppled down the stairs and shattered on the floor leaving broken glass strewn over the wooden boards and the stairs as Enoch almost fell down himself in his rush to get down. He dropped hard to his knees on the floor and winced as glass sliced his finger but Enoch didn’t care about that.

His mother lay at an odd angle unmoving and glassy eyed as blood trickled from her head where it had struck the banister hard. Enoch didn’t need to feel for a pulse to know she was gone, he knew death better than anyone. His breaths came fast and broken and he didn’t bother trying to stop the moisture stinging his eyes. It was his fault. It was because of his hearts that she’d fallen. She had been afraid of _him_ and he may as well have driven her to the stairs himself.

Any pain from the bruise on his face and the glass driven into his hand was diminished by the pain that Enoch felt ripping his own heart apart as he doubled over his mother’s body and let sobs begin to wrack his body for the first time since he could remember. All his anger to the people who didn’t accept him, and the fight to belong somewhere drained out of him in grief because now nothing else existed except the too real body of his mother who would never try and coax him out of his room with a kind word again. What about Faith? She wasn’t even four years old yet, could she even comprehend it?

She didn’t need to know, and as long as Enoch was here, she wouldn’t know until he couldn’t shield her from it anymore.

Enoch trembled as he sat up slowly on his knees again. His face was wet with tears that still kept falling silently as he tried not to look at her face. He pushed himself up to his feet and slumped heavily against the banister to support his legs that felt strangely weak beneath his weight as he forced himself back up those stairs and over the landing towards the door that was still mercifully closed.

He pushed open the door and before his sister could say a word he dropped down onto her little mattress beside her and pulled her into his lap. The boy was still shaking and he was sure she would be able to feel it through her little frame as he hugged her uncharacteristically warmly to his chest and sniffed back tears.

“Are you cwying?” Faith’s high little voice chimed up where she was squirming against him but Enoch didn’t speak and certainly didn’t let her go yet. “Enoch?” She squirmed more, peeking her little face over his shoulder and he knew she knew something was very wrong.  
“Where’s mama?”

Enoch choked back a sob and slowly let his sister go so she could actually look at him. He tried his best, and failed, to give her a convincing enough smile. “Out…just you ‘an me for now.” For how long, he wasn’t sure. Something in the back of his mind and the tug in his gut told him he wasn’t going to see her again either for one reason or another.

“You promise me, Faith…ye won’t come out unless I get ye’…okay? Ye understand?”

Faith’s normally happy face turned into a scowl and she wriggled off of her brother’s lap and crossed her arms over her nightdress.

“’Old on…” Enoch wiped his nose with his sleeve and left the room, returning a minute later with a mouse heart behind his back and a new homunculus in his other hand. “’ere…another one for ye…” Keeping his back to Faith, he coated the heart in clay and squeezed it together. With another push of his thumb, it sprang to life and he left it go to run around the room for her.   
Almost immediately Faith’s scowling face started to twitch into a smile and she tilted her head up at Enoch again. He had just turned to leave the room when there was a patter of footsteps and she had thrown her little arms around his legs in a warm hug that almost hurt Enoch more.

“I’ll come get ye soon, okay? Maybe we can go to the park…” He lied and ruffled her hair one more time before leaving her with her animated doll and closing her in the room again.

Enoch paused halfway down the stairs and stared at his mother’s unmoving body with shaking breaths. His eyes tore away from it and his fist clenched as they were drawn to the cow’s heart lying in a pile of glass on the last step.

Did he dare?


	10. 22nd July 1909 - Part 2

** 22nd July 1909 **

Enoch’s shoulders heaved again as he leaned over the kitchen sink emptying his stomach of the little he’d had to eat. In sixteen years of being an undertaker’s son the sight of death had never bothered him until now and in almost five of bringing things back from the dead, it had never deterred him at all until now.

He groaned and dropped his forehead onto the cool metal of the sink before turning on the water and holding his mouth under it to rinse the foul taste of bile out of it. In the last fifteen minutes Enoch had experienced such a range of emotions in such quick succession that he thought he might explode somewhere between anger and grief.

Just when he thought he had summoned his courage, nausea had for once gotten the better of him and Enoch was still shaking as he clutched the sides of the sink. He didn’t know what else he could do. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t but this way…at least he could hear her voice one more time. His heart hammered so hard against his ribs it was almost painful as Enoch finally straightened up, closed his eyes and took a few long breaths. His eyes snapped open with an air of cool detachment that he wished he really felt but hadn’t made it past the surface as he slowly walked back to the stairs.   
To his great relief, Faith had listened to him and stayed in her room. She didn’t need to know yet, and she certainly didn’t need to see what he was going to do. Enoch crouched down beside the body of his mother that lay exactly as she had fallen. With a knife and a heart in his lap, almost every part of him screamed that this was wrong but Enoch didn’t want to listen to that part. He only wanted to listen to the little part of his mind that told him he could see his mother alive, so to speak, one last time.  
His own hand was still bleeding from the cut he’d gleaned from broken glass and it stung as he curled it around the handle of the knife.  
His stomach churned violently again as he pressed the point to his mother’s side. With the last shred of his strength, Enoch pushed aside the last fragment of logic that threatened to stop him and gave himself over to be driven by grief and selfish gain.   
Blood trickled over his hands and exposed wrists as the blade pierced fabric and flesh and Enoch sucked in a breath through his teeth to steel himself for what he was about to do.

Time might as well have stopped completely for all the time it took Enoch to press shaking fingers to the incision he’d made and slowly, agonisingly slowly, start to reach inside. Though no stranger to corpses, human or otherwise, it all felt alien again as it had the first time. Blue eyes closed and remained clenched shut, as if by shutting off that one sense it would dull his touch too. Far from it. Enoch knew it wasn’t really the case but he imagined momentarily that he felt more somehow and quickly opened his eyes again and made the mistake of looking at his mother’s face. It was like he had just been stabbed himself with the guilt he suddenly felt looking at her glassy eyes and cold skin. But it was too late to turn back even if he wanted to, so he might as well carry it out.

He navigated through bone and flesh blindly but with well-rehearsed fingers until with a lurch in his chest, he found the heart he was searching for. For just a moment he hesitated. What if she was still afraid of him and hated him more for this? Would she be in denial as many of the people he’d raised had been? Or would she be accepting like few of them had?

There was nothing for it now. He needed to know for himself.

Enoch picked up the cow’s heart and gripped it tightly in his right hand until it began to beat and throb with new life. He raised it above his head and squeezed tightly with both hands. It should be easier in these circumstances, she had only just died after all and so, he reasoned, should come back quickly.

But there was no movement in the heart clutched tightly in his left hand.

“Come _on_...” He growled and willed himself to be stronger than this. His whole body began to tremble with the effort and his eyes were forced closed as it almost began to hurt but he would not allow the cow’s heart to give out.

It happened. Enoch’s eyes shot open again, seemingly even bluer than before as they swam with moisture, whether from the effort he was going to or from grief, he wasn’t sure. He felt his mother’s heart give a great lurch that almost crushed his hand against bone before it began to beat anew. For the first time, Enoch didn’t dare let it go to beat itself and chose instead to maintain the connection in hopes it would strengthen it.

“Mum?”

Her body twitched and her formally glassy and dead blue eyes blinked again as she tried to raise her arm. The moment it came into contact with Enoch’s she seemed to notice him again. The fear, the last thing he’d seen on her face, was gone suddenly and replaced with something akin to confusion.

“Mum?” He tried again and Enoch’s voice came out far more forced and throaty than he’d been expecting as he stared, strangely entranced, at what he’d just done.

“Enoch? What ‘ave you done?”

Her voice was all it took for Enoch to feel tears start to leak from his eyes again. He wiped them again angrily with his left sleeve, the cow’s heart still clutched in his hands.   
“Ya know, don’t ya?” He mumbled and gasped in pain when his hand was twisted as she tried to sit up. He adjusted himself at an odd angle to let her move and tried to keep his eyes on her translucently pale face.

“I know, Enoch. What ‘ave you done?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper but it was enough to make him avert his eyes and look at the floor.

“I’m sorry…I couldn’-this is what I do…I can’t ‘elp it. It was my fault, I ‘ad to…”

“It wasn’t you. Let me go, Enoch. Let go.”

“No.” The single word came out stronger than he had felt. His whole arm was starting to shake again with the effort that went into keeping the cow’s heart beating as long as he could but he wasn’t just going to let go and let it happen again.

“I don’t know what ye are now…” A low groan left Valentine’s throat and Enoch’s fears were realised by the way she looked at him. She was still afraid of him. “But ye don’ belong ‘ere. I don’ either now.”

She was right, on both counts and Enoch knew it well enough not to argue. He had no intention of coming home when it was over. He didn’t belong here anymore than his mother now belonged with the living. But he didn’t want to let it go while he could delay the inevitable.

“I ain’t bad, Mum…I never meant no ‘arm wiv anyfin’. Now it’s my fault-” His voice cracked off and he struggled to hold back the sobs that were threatening to overtake him again.

“I know you didn’ mean ‘arm…”

“It’s just _me_ , I can’t stop it.”

“Ye can stop somefin’…”   
Enoch dragged his eyes up slowly to his mother’s matching ones, though strangely vague like she was only half present. He shook his head stubbornly.

“Let go, Enoch. Ye gotta let go now.”

“I don’t wan-” His argument was lost when he heard the sound of a doorhandle around the corner and his grip on both hearts started to loosen automatically.

“Let me go now…”

He didn’t have a choice anymore. He could hear the hinges of the front door beginning to squeak and knew he only had seconds. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. With a heavy heart of his own and watery eyes he let go of his mother’s heart and, with sickening sounds, tried to gently remove his hand. Enoch let go and severed the energy he was so desperately trying to keep giving the cow’s heart. It turned grey and shrivelled quickly in his hand as with a final low groan Valentine O’Connor dropped back to the floor and moved no more.

xxxXxxx

“Enoch, ye better sti-” Owen’s voice stopped abruptly mid-sentence as he rounded the corner from the front door and froze with one foot half raised.

His wife lay unmoving near the foot of the staircase. Blood caked the side of her head turned towards him from the blow that had probably killed her. Her eyes were open, and the last light they had to offer was still fading from them into the vacant, glassy stare he was so familiar with. More blood covered her side and the floorboards beneath her. Enoch, his own son, was kneeling at her side and staring up at him. His bruised cheek was wet with tears and his face twisted into a pained expression the likes of which Owen had never seen before. Worse than that was the blood, undoubtedly Valentine’s that coated Enoch’s hands and was still running down his forearm and the shrivelled, grey heart that was clenched in his fist.

In a split second, Owen understood everything. All the unexplained reanimations of corpses in the mortuary, all the hearts they had found in Enoch’s room only that morning. It was all him. Now here was Enoch beside the dead body of his own mother, holding a heart from who knew what. If he hadn’t killed her himself, he was trying to do whatever freakish thing he had done before to bring her back.

Owen’s mind processed, or tried to process, all of the information in a matter of seconds before his body regained the ability to move and he staggered backwards into the wall with his hand pressed to his mouth. His breaths came so rapidly he almost dissolved into hyperventilating as he stared at the bloodied body of his wife. All the while, Enoch did not even try to move. He only stared back, almost as vacant as the dead.

“You…” By the time Owen had regained the ability to speak, his eyes had filled with tears of their own, and his face twisted into an ugly mask of grief and rage. “What ‘ave you done? What ‘ave you DONE?!”

Enoch dropped the heart onto the floor as his father advanced and jumped to his feet at the same moment his father fell to his knees and touched her head where the blood was beginning to coagulate. He didn’t say a word, he didn’t need to say a word as he held himself every bit as responsible as he was certain his father did. But his desire for self-preservation kept him warily watching and trying to stay out of reach.

“You _freak_ of a boy, what did ya do ta her?!”

“She fell.” Enoch choked out and glanced at the end of the banister where she had struck her head. “I couldn’ do nofin’…”

Owen’s dark eyes flickered from his wife whom he now cradled in his arms to the banister and then to Enoch. His whole body trembled with poorly repressed rage as tears slipped unbeknownst from his eyes. Gently, like he had once held his newborns, he lowered Valentine down to the floor, afraid of damaging her further, and took a dangerous step towards his son.  
“What d’you mean you couldn’t do nofin’? Isn’t that what ye said ye _could_ do?!”

“Don’t work like that…doesn’ last…I did it…”  
Though very near to his father’s height himself, his father’s presence was unusually menacing even given the recent blow Enoch had taken. The boy took a step backwards as his father stepped forward and began to adopt a fight or flight position. He knew what would happen and had fully expected it. His father had reacted so badly to Enoch’s unique abilities but even that would be tame compared to what he knew was about to come.

“Freak…” Owen practically seethed and he didn’t miss the moment pain flickered in his son’s eyes at the term that was quickly followed by a flash of what he was sure was anger reflected right back at him. “You get ‘ere right now.”

“No.” Enoch muttered and continued backing up until he felt the doorframe to the living area behind him.

“She fell cause’a _you_ , didn’t she? Your ‘arts and weird little doll fings…and look what ye did, boy. Come ‘ere!” Owen roared and reached out a hand for his son who moved in the same moment to avoid him.

Enoch wasn’t quick enough. He had hesitated half a second too long and as he tried to duck out of his father’s reach he felt his collar seized in his father’s hand. Struggling vainly to get away, Enoch yelped as he was half dragged and half stumbled back to his mother’s body.

“You did _that_ didn’t ya?”

Enoch was forced to look as his father pointed to the long incision along his mother’s side where Enoch had brought her back briefly. He nodded stiffly as the top buttons of his shirt began to press into his neck, pulled taut from the tight grip on his collar. “I tried t-”

“What’s wrong wiv you?!” Owen released his son’s clothes, leaving him to slump and cough his windpipe clear again as he kept a firm grip on his upper arm. “She’s your mother! An’ you’re cuttin’ ‘er up!” His voice cracked at the end and he felt ill at the choice of words but his anger towards his son and losing his wife did not diminish the hatred and fear he had for whatever he thought Enoch was. He did not slacken his almost bruising grip on Enoch’s arm and without thinking, swung out the back of his hand again.

Enoch had been expecting it and already clenched his eyes shut but that did nothing to lessen the force of the blow. A cry wrenched itself free of his throat as the force wrenched him out of his father’s grip and made him topple over his own ankles to the floor. He could have protested, and shouted that he had to do it to try and bring her back for them but it wouldn’t have done any good anyway. Owen O’Connor was too far gone in his grief and Enoch, the object of his anger, had become the outlet. The young man just groaned as he got to his hands and knees to try and scamper out of reach.

“I ain’t ‘avin’ no killers and…and…freaks in my ‘ouse, boy…”

“Then let me outta it, but I ain’t no-” Enoch’s retort was lost in a whimper when he felt a belt come down on the side of his head before he could get to his feet. His bloodied hands curled into fists on the floors as he lunged to the side to avoid another strike. “Let me go…”

“Oh I’ll let ye go right to the constable where ye should be.” Owen growled and brought his belt down hard again with all the force of a viciously wielded truncheon before Enoch could squirm out of the way again. Enoch had curled in on himself now against the side of the staircase, trying to lessen the impact of the blows that rained down. He cowered in fear as he felt metal catch and slice the skin beside his eyebrow.

“Enoch!”

His daughter’s high little voice caught Owen’s ear and he turned a distraught face up to Faith who was standing on the top stair looking down at them. She was clutching one of Enoch’s living dolls in her arms. The undertaker knew without having to demand it of his son that she hadn’t seen Valentine yet. Valentine who was still lying dead at the bottom of the staircase Faith was standing on.  
“Faith…”

“Daddy, stop!”

Enoch flinched involuntarily as he saw the belt rise again in his peripheral vision but then the hand froze and Faith’s voice distracted them both from the moment. He didn’t even dare to look up at her as their father’s hand dropped back to his side and Enoch thought he could pinpoint the exact moment in time when his priorities changed from beating Enoch to shielding Faith from the sight of her dead mother.

Enoch did not waste his father’s hesitation. The moment the offensive hand dropped, Enoch slowly uncurled himself from his protective position against the stairs. He reached up and used the stair over his head to support himself as he gathered his footing again.

“Faith, look at me…don’ look anywhere else…”

Enoch didn’t even want to look back at his sister. If he did, he might lose his resolve. So the boy didn’t look back at all. He steeled his blue eyes at his father one last time and, while he was still watching Faith carefully, Enoch ran.

He heard his father shout behind him as he hurtled through the front door and collided with his uncle with such force that they both toppled to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

“What the ‘ell?! E-Enoch? ‘Old on there!” Both sufficiently winded from the impact, they struggled to their feet and Uriah just managed to seize hold of the back of Enoch’s vest long enough to see the blood all over his arms and the bruises on his face. “Where d’you fink-”

But Enoch had slipped out of his open vest that Uriah had caught onto and without stopping to explain anything, was sprinting off down the street before Uriah could even finish his thought.

xxxXxxx

Only one thought flashed through Enoch’s mind as he ran as fast as he could through the street, and that was to get as far away from what was left of his family as he could. He caught glimpses of surprised faces as he hurtled between then, almost knocking several unfortunate passers-by over as he did. He didn’t care what he looked like, though he must have been a sight to see running so hard and looking the way he must.   
He ducked into an alleyway and sprinted down it as a short cut. The moment he burst from the other end back onto the street, the boy found himself skidding to an abrupt halt as he ran into the path of a horse and cart coming towards him at a very brisk trot. The driver shouted as Enoch burst seemingly out of nowhere into the road and the horse, a handsome chestnut creature wearing blinkers, reared with a frightened whinny and kicked out its front hooves wildly.   
Narrowly avoiding taking one of them to the head, Enoch held out his bloodied arms and paused for just half a second to catch a very quick breath before he took off again leaving the driver shouting profanities after him.

Enoch didn’t stop again until he reached what he thought was the centre of the labyrinth of London’s backstreets. The area was mostly abandoned and it wasn’t hard to see why. Grimy, dirty walls that stunk of urine and smoke lined every run down old house. The only people that inhabited this particular street were street urchins, drunks and people who simply had nowhere else to go.

Enoch clutched his side as it burned with the fiery pain of overexertion and slumped against a filthy wall where his legs quickly turned to jelly and sunk under his weight. How long until they had the police out looking for him? Until more, far more obvious, posters of him were hung around the city. Wanted for questioning in a murder case is what they would say, because what else was his father supposed to tell them? Enoch groaned and drew his tired legs up to his chest to rest his forehead on them. It ached and throbbed the moment it touched his knees and he was suddenly very aware of how much every part of him hurt.   
He could still feel the sting of the belt as it struck his shoulders and his neck, and the aching, jarring blows on his cheeks and jaw. Enoch touched his fingers tenderly to his jaw. He could already feel it swelling and knew he had to look as awful as he felt.   
It was all because he was different in the strangest of ways, and because he had tried to bring his mother back to the land of the living. Mother. He didn’t have one of those anymore, not one that was here and who he knew loved him. Although, Enoch hadn’t been entirely convinced of that anymore before she had fallen. The last look he’d seen on her living face had been fear, but even then at least she’d had expressions to give.

Enoch sniffled and wiped his nose on his filthy sleeves as the tears threatened to fall again. No one was here to see him cry, no one was here to scorn and tell him to stop it.  
Or so he had thought. Enoch barely dropped his head back to his arms when there was a rustle of movement beside him and he jerked suddenly.   
Two very dirty, very poor children had approached him so silently Enoch hadn’t noticed until one of them had touched his shoulder.

“Any spare change, guv?”

“Two pence? Anyfin’?”

“Don’t touch me.” Enoch growled and wrestled his sleeve out of the girl’s grip as she caught it. He staggered to his feet and stared at them coldly. It was a boy and a girl, neither of whom looked older than eight or nine and whose hair was so encrusted with grime and dirt it stuck out stiff in all directions.   
The girl reached out again and tried to pull on Enoch’s shirt while the boy quite obviously tried to reach into his pocket.   
“I ain’t got no money, I said don’t _touch_ me.” Enoch snapped and forcefully detached the boy from his trouser pocket with such force the child fell back a few steps. But they were desperate and undeterred so much so that it almost unnerved Enoch when they advanced again.  
He reached out and clapped a hand over the girl’s wrist when she reached out to pull on his shirt again and scowled fiercely at them. “Get off me.”  
Then suddenly, as one unit, they seemed to notice the dried blood that coated his hands and wrists and the bruises over his skin. The girl let go at once and looked up at Enoch with a glint of fear behind her otherwise unnervingly blank stare. At the same time, the boy pulled Enoch’s knife from his pocket and cried out as he dropped it. Enoch was almost as surprised as the child was to see it, he didn’t even remember pocketing it again. But it did the trick and the two children shot off down the alley as swiftly as they’d appeared.  
“That’s right! Ye better run!” Enoch shouted after them before kicking the knife away where it skidded into a nearby drain.

The boy let out a long breath and slumped back down against the wall, sliding until he was once more sitting on the hard stone.  A shard of broken glass glinted to his right and he picked it up carefully and turned it around in his fingers until he could just catch a glimpse of his reflection. His face was dark with bruises as he held up reddened fingers and touched the corner of his left eye. He winced and drew his fingers away wet anew with his own fresh blood. It was a small cut which began above his eyebrow but stung nevertheless. Angered suddenly, Enoch hurled the glass at the wall opposite him where it shattered into hundreds of tiny shards all around.   
What was he supposed to become now? He had nothing but the stained old clothes on his back, not even any clay to make any company for himself. Would he be no better than street urchins begging and skulking in dark alleys, or petty pickpockets that stole to live? That wasn’t to say he hadn’t stolen his share of things in his life, it might even come naturally to him. It couldn’t be worse than what he already was now, alone and afraid.

xxxXxxx

Enoch hardly moved for hours, caught with pounding headaches that made his eyes swim and his head spin and put all his energy into remaining conscious at all. He was thirsty and his throat ached for a drink, though otherwise his appetite was still non-existent.

Clouds had once again shrouded the sun by the afternoon and rain had once again started to fall despite the summer warmth still in the air. Enoch took advantage of it and ducked out of the semi-shelter of the cramped alleyway beneath overhanging roofs into a more open one to scrub hard at the dried blood on his skin.

Enoch retreated, thoroughly drenched, back down the alley in which he had found temporary refuge. He kicked at a few disease ridden rats scuttling along the very edge of the wall and into holes and crevices for shelter.   
By now his mother would be one of the bodies lain out in their funeral parlour, if indeed Owen and Uriah had found the strength and the heart to do it themselves. What about Faith? How would she grow up with only their father now to look after her? At least at home there was a bed and a roof to shelter under. Enoch didn’t want to think about it now, so he tried in vain to close his mind to the dangerous thoughts that plagued his mind. He’d seen the last of his family, of that Enoch was certain.

The cleansing shower didn’t last longer than fifteen or twenty minutes and Enoch had barely closed his eyes and resumed his huddled position in the corner then he heard a distinctively familiar sound that made his raise his head in reluctant curiosity.

A long, froglike chirping made him turn his head and frown a little as the very same bird that had perched on his windowsill only hours ago and had followed him to the Thames perched on a pile of bricks to his right.

“Why are you followin’ me?” He mumbled and then raised his eyebrows at his own absurdity. He raised the dead but now finding himself talking to a bird suddenly seemed ridiculous. “Stupid fing…”

The little brown bird hopped down onto another brick before flapping its wings up at Enoch and chirruping indignantly. Enoch scoffed and dropped his head back onto his arms as it took flight again and flew off around the corner.

There was a peculiar sound like the beating of wings a hundred times the size that bird actually was and against his better judgement, Enoch lifted his head again and fixed his blue eyes somewhat warily on the corner the bird had flown around. He could hear movement but didn’t dare to move closer to see what it was.

Whole minutes of soft rustlings and claps past before the distinctive tap of a person’s shoes on pavement joined the orchestra and a moment later a woman appeared around the corner.

“Hello, Enoch. My name is Miss Nightjar.”


	11. 22nd July 1909-3rd April 1901

** 22nd July 1909 – 3rd April 1901 **

The woman appeared to be in her late forties, with a slightly hooked nose, not unlike a bird, and a full head of dark hair piled up into a bun on the top of her head. She was dressed in a dark blouse and skirt that gathered around the bustle and stood quite tall, carrying herself with the air of a matron in a hospital about her business.   
“Hello Enoch, my name is Miss Nightjar…” There was a kindness in her strong voice as she spoke, and something about it reminded Enoch very much of the sound of the bird that had fluttered off minutes before into what he knew to be a dead end.

“…’ow do you know me name?” Enoch muttered and stared wide eyed at the woman from his position on the ground against the wall.

“Your name is Enoch Ambrose O’Connor, the son of Owen O’Connor a local undertaker and you are sixteen years old.”

“Should I know ye?”

“I shouldn’t think so, no. But you have seen me before, and I certainly know you. I must say, I didn’t care for your dismissal early this morning though I understand the circumstances.”

Enoch tensed and glared at the strange woman as he started to stiffly push himself to his feet, keeping his back to the wall as he stared at her warily. “I never seen ya before. What the ‘ell-”

“You never _saw_ me before, actually, but that’s hardly the issue here.” Miss Nightjar corrected and Enoch’s scowl only deepened as he watched her with an uneasy sort of curiosity as she continued with more of a softness to her words as she passed an eye scrutinisingly over his face. “My dear boy, you have had a difficult time of it, haven’t you?”

“I don’t fink I’m any o’ your business, lady…” Enoch turned his face away self-consciously and turned up his collar to try poorly to cover some of the bruises and welts. He was thoroughly unnerved by how much this strange woman seemed to know about him, she spoke to him as though she knew him like an old friend. “Leave me alone.” Keeping his head bowed slightly, the boy turned his back on her and started to walk back down the alley.

“More than you think it is. You’re not the only one, Enoch.”

Enoch couldn’t help himself. He paused after only taking a few steps away and, though he didn’t turn his head, his heart started to beat faster as he muttered, “The only _what_?” She couldn’t possibly be talking about what a tiny part of him dearly hoped she was, could she?

“I think you know precisely what I mean. Wouldn’t you like to know what’s been happening to you?”

He didn’t want to care so much about it, or anything at the time, but something very akin to the tingling in the soles of his feet when he embraced his power, compelled the boy to turn around on the spot and look back over at the woman. “What’s that ‘sposed to mean?”

“I know perfectly well what you can do, Enoch. Wouldn’t you like to know why?” Something glinted in her dark eyes, something that made Enoch drop his guard and take a few more steps back towards her curiously.

“You can tell me that?” He asked cautiously, and glanced down at the palms of his hands without fully realising what he was doing before he curled his fingers into a fist and clenched them shut.

“I can, my dear boy. As much as you need to understand and that we have time for to begin with. Now…I’m sure we won’t be disturbed here so…” Miss Nightjar turned an empty apple crate upside down with the heel of her boot, swept aside her skirts and sat down upon it. “Perhaps you should be sitting for this discussion.” When Enoch didn’t move she smiled just a little and inclined her head. “Tell me, do you really think that I mean you anything but help?”

She meant no harm, he was quite sure of that, though Enoch knew he’d never seen this woman before in his life. He couldn’t explain how he knew, but something felt warm and almost protective about her, like a mother hen. Slowly, he sunk back down on the curb just across from her and said nothing.

“Let me first offer my condolences for the loss of your mother, Enoch.”

Enoch stiffened and looked away at the wall at the olive branch held out towards him. He gritted his teeth, clenched his jaw and tried not to show much emotion. “Didn’ agree ta talk about that. Stop it or I’ll just go now.”

The woman sighed and smiled a little too understandingly for his liking over at him before folding her hands in her lap a little formally for their location. “Oh very well. You, my dear boy, are peculiar.”

Enoch’s eyebrows shot towards his hair as he lost his guard and genuinely looked quite surprised at her. Peculiar? Was that just her own way of calling him a freak too? He composed himself slightly and glared at her.   
“Speak for yourself. I’m _not_ a freak.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Enoch. I am far from calling you a freak. I’m not at all fond of that word, it implies that something is wrong.” She unfolded her hands and began to tap her fingertips together lightly. Her nails, which Enoch hadn’t noticed before were quite unusually long, made a soft tapping as they connected. “There’s nothing wrong with you, boy, just different. Or, as we call it, peculiar.”

“Well I ain’t that either.”

“Oh, so you think that being able to restore life to dead things is an attribute everyone around you possesses?”

Enoch opened his mouth to retort and shut it again in alarm. She really did know about him. He swallowed warily and uncurled his fists to look down at his hands again.   
“’ow did you-”

“I know more about you, Enoch O’Connor, than you do at this moment. As I said, you’re not the only one, you know? There are many, many others like you.”

“You?” Enoch asked, and cringed at the hope he heard in his own voice, it was almost like a child. “Can you do it too? Is that ‘ow you know?”

“Oh no, perhaps I chose my words poorly…there are many others but not _exactly_ like you. But am I peculiar? Absolutely.” A smile crossed the woman’s face as she held her chin high and looked quite proud for a moment. “You don’t think that bird following you was just a bird, do you?”

Enoch just stared at her vacantly, in much the same way his uncle had stared at him that morning when he’d outright told him what he could do, disbelieving. “You tellin’ me that bird was you? That’s mad. People can’t turn into-”

Miss Nightjar just raised one thick, dark eyebrow which cut Enoch off as surely as if she’d just gagged him. She fixed him with a challenging look, as if daring the boy who raised the dead to tell her that turning into a bird was impossible.

“Okay I got the point.” He mumbled and for once, shut his mouth and didn’t argue anymore. “What…what d’you mean I’m…whatever you said I am?”

“Peculiar. Simply put it means that you are one of those who have a unique…ability or quality that normals do not. We’ll have plenty of time to discuss it in far more detail later.”

“There are others…are they all…like…whatever you are?”

“Oh no, not at all. There are few who are born like myself and my sisters, that’s another thing I would prefer to discuss at a later time. Peculiarities come in many forms, some, like yourself are aggressive-”

“Now I’m aggressive?” Enoch interrupted and thought of his family briefly. Was this woman calling him dangerous like they thought he was? His abilities, his…peculiarity wasn’t all bad, in fact he didn’t think it was bad at all.

“In as much that you can activate it yourself, not that you are dangerous.” She pierced Enoch with a pointed look as if she had read his mind, “Some don’t even begin to manifest until well into life. Others right from birth and many, like yourself, come in one’s youth. As I’m sure you know, Enoch…” She raised a finger and gestured to the bruises all over him, “…normals do not often take kindly to our kind. They fear what they cannot understand. It’s quite human to do so.”

Enoch just blinked and stared at the dirty ground between them. His head, which had already been aching, was throbbing harder with the ridiculous information that had just poured into it.

Miss. Nightjar consulted an old pocket watch she had pulled from somewhere and tucked it away again. “Now, we have a train to catch in a little over an hour and so we’d better get a move on if we want to catch it.”

“What?” Enoch snapped out of his dazed reverie and stared at her. “What makes you fink I’m goin’ anywhere wiv you? I don’t know you.”

“Because, Enoch…I can give you a home. A home where you won’t have to hide, and with the company of other children much like you. There are things, normal and otherwise, who would hurt you here. Have I said anything untruthful to you thus far, my dear boy?”

Enoch frowned at her choice of words, but the presence of the matron looking Miss Nightjar had, from the moment she had first spoken, meant a certain kind of security that Enoch had never felt before since he was just a toddler in his mother’s arms. He wanted to be on his own, but at the same time, a larger more dominant part of him dearly wanted somewhere to belong. There was no good future for him hiding in the shadows of London and suspected of murder, only that of an early death when winter came, if nothing had killed him before that.

“They might be lookin’ for me.” He muttered but slowly started to push his aching body up to his feet as he kept his blue eyes fixed on a point just over Miss Nightjar’s left shoulder.

“ _If_ anyone is, Enoch, they won’t know they’ve seen you. You have my word, you’ll be quite safe if you come with me.”

xxxXxxx

It was almost a full hour later by the time Enoch jumped down from the horse drawn taxi cart outside Paddington station in the company of a strange woman who he did not know at all but somehow trusted completely. They hadn’t spoken a word in the fifty-three minutes it had taken to reach the station but Enoch knew his appearance had drawn the driver’s curiosity. He was filthy and battered and looked every bit as if he’d been pulled off a street corner begging. As they left and Miss Nightjar had paid the fare from a purse she had withdrawn from some invisible pocket on her person, she waved a little mottled brown feather beneath the driver’s nose so quickly that Enoch might have missed it had he even blinked.

“Where are we going anyway?”

“Swansea. It’s around a four hour train ride away in southern Wales. A train which we are very nearly late for, so no dawdling now.” Miss Nightjar rapped her knuckles on the counter of the ticket booth on the platform where the bespectacled elderly man behind it had been starting to doze.  
“Two for your next train to Swansea, please.”

“Of course, madam.” He had a voice like chalk scratching on a blackboard in a school classroom, Enoch thought as he ran a hand through his already thoroughly tousled hair to try and cover the cut and one of the worse bruises on his eye.  
The man squinted across the counter at the woman and the boy as he took the money and his dim eyes came to rest on the grubby looking lad.  
“You there, boy? Have I seen you somewhere before?”

“I should think not.” Miss Nightjar spoke before Enoch could think of a response to give and he looked over at her with a deadpan expression ready to go with whatever story she came up with. “This is my nephew, we’re simply returning from London today. I apologise for his appearance, childish roughhousing taken a little too far.”

It seemed satisfactory enough and the tickets were handed over just a moment before the train came thundering into the station.   
Enoch had never been on a train before. He’d never even been in a station before let alone left London. Smoke streamed onto the wooden platform as the great iron train squealed to a halt on the tracks. Conductors in slightly shabby red uniforms leapt from the doors onto the platform, their gold buttons glinting through the smoke that shrouded all the comers and goers briefly from the waist down.

The boy found himself examining the train with the same kind of curiosity he listened in to the conversations of old soldiers about military exploits. When Miss Nightjar prodded him pointedly in the back, he jerked forward and stepped off the platform and onto the stairs in a doorway.  He ducked his head to pass through the entrance and straightened up right away as they entered the car.   
Either side of the car was lined with long benches in front of the glass windows and fitted with cushions covered in a hideous mottled green fabric. Beneath the benches was empty space wide enough to fit small cases of luggage and sacks. Metal rails stretched the length of the ceiling from which hung strips of leather to hold onto while standing. Over each lot of seats flickered a weak electric light which impressed Enoch considerably with the very limited exposure he’d ever had to electric lights. In its entirety, save for the hideous fabric patterns, the interior of the train car was quite pleasant to Enoch and more luxurious even in its simplicity than his own home.

Miss Nightjar ushered him along to the very end of the car where Enoch sunk onto the final place on the bench and for a moment could not have been more grateful for a soft place to sit. Others filed into their car, but to Enoch’s immense relief, there were few of them who all took their seats along the benches.

Two minutes went by which Enoch spent staring around the train car and tapping his feet on the floor restlessly before the conductor began to pace down the middle.  
“Tickets ready please…”

Miss Nightjar held out the tickets as the man approached them. He took one glance before punching a hole through each ticket with a little metal contraption not unlike pliers in appearance. They continued to sit in silence for just a few more minutes before the train suddenly lurched and Enoch gripped onto the metal bar at the edge of the seat at his left and turned to look out the window as the train began to pull away from the station.

They had barely been moving for ten minutes before Enoch felt eyes on him. He looked away from the door to the next train car he had been staring at and over at Miss Nightjar. But she wasn’t looking at him. She sat with her hands neatly folded in her lap beside him and her bird like eyes fixed on the window of the opposite side of the car as the cities old buildings flashed by them. Enoch’s blue eyes came to land on the man and woman sitting just opposite and to the right of them. The man’s nose was buried in a newspaper as he strained to read it by the dim lighting over his head but the woman, whose hands twisted a handkerchief in her lap, was staring quite shamelessly at them.

Enoch scowled in response and self-consciously tried to pull his collar back up over the welts on his exposed neck. He had no hat now to pull down over his face and hide the bruises there and so tried in vain to direct his stubborn curls to cover his forehead and eyebrow a little.

Miss Nightjar seemed to notice this and arched an eyebrow at the couple stealing glances at the young boy before turning and casting a more critical eye over his injuries herself.  
“We’ll have you fixed up in no time, Enoch.” She spoke quietly in the otherwise silent cabin and he only grunted in response, more embarrassed by her drawing attention to it than the bruises themselves.

xxxXxxx

The four hour train ride was predominantly silent, save for the occasional guffaw of laughter from a group of men at the far end of the car who sat swapping stories and jokes as they puffed on their pipes.

Miss Ingrid Nightjar brushed out the creases in her skirts as the train began to slow as it approached Swansea’s station and looked to her left at the teenage boy she had taken charge of. A smile cracked her lips as she saw he was still sleeping with his head slumped back against the window and looking distinctly less confrontational than she had seen yet. Enoch had been asleep most of the ride and he couldn’t hardly be blamed for doing so.   
In all her years of finding and caring for peculiar children in need of help, Miss Nightjar rarely found them in any better circumstances than Enoch had fallen into.

She cleared her throat and gently tapped one finger on the boy’s shoulder as the train began to pull into the station and draw to a stop.   
Enoch jerked awake and drew in a hasty breath as he was pulled out of his dreamless sleep and back into consciousness on the thin cushion of the train’s seating. “What, what?”

They’d come to a stop, he realised after a moment and turned to try and see where they were out the window but all that was visible were clouds of steam and coal smoke that had rushed from the train as it squealed to a halt. Yawning, Enoch scrambled to his feet and was immediately aware of how much he ached again, made worse somehow by sitting in the same position for so long.

It was another hour before Miss. Nightjar consulted her watch once more and came to a halt in the Welsh countryside just outside and overgrown hay meadow by the coast. The sun had just set and the cool ocean breeze was edging on the brink of crisp.

“Where are you takin’ me anywhere? This is middle of nowhere.” Enoch grumbled just as his stomach growled loudly. He’d hardly eaten a thing in the last twenty-four hours and was finally just beginning to realise how hungry he really was.

“We’ve almost arrived, as a matter of fact, and supper should just about be waiting for us when we do. Just over there, you see?” Miss Nightjar pointed out across the meadow and Enoch squinted to follow her line of sight.

On the far side of the meadow all he could see was the weather beaten shell of a house. It wasn’t exactly a ruin; it was too recent for that. But the elements out in the exposed countryside had done their work to it. By any means it was certainly uninhabited.

“…What that old thing?”

“Yes, ‘that old thing’. Don’t be too cynical now, young man, follow me.”

“I got a lot to be cynical about.” Enoch grumbled but his companion had already marched off again, this time towards the cliffs to Enoch’s bemusement. Hungry, tired and sore, he followed obediently until he stood just a metre from the crumbling rocky edge overlooking the tossing waves. He’d never seen the sea, or even country until today.

“What’s the big-” Enoch turned away and whatever he was about to say was lost as he suddenly found himself alone. He turned in a full circle and stared wide eyed around him, “Miss? Hello?”

“Do be quick about it, Enoch. In here, boy.”

Her voice came from behind him and Enoch spun on the spot to see her arm extending from an opening in a rocky outcrop that he hadn’t noticed before. It was so overgrown with heather and grass that he wasn’t sure he would have ever found it otherwise.

Enoch stepped over towards the rocky formation and pushed aside the heather that concealed the opening as Miss Nightjar’s arm vanished. It was just wide enough for a grown man to fit in if he ducked and Enoch did have to in order to stick his head in hesitantly.

“Don’t be afraid now, there’s a path here just follow me.”

“I’m not afraid.” Enoch muttered, although he was a little as he squeezed himself into the confining space. All light of the outside world was shut out and he couldn’t so much as see his hand when he held it in front of his face. There was nothing for it but to step blindly ahead and follow the woman’s voice as she led him down a narrow, stony path into the very face of the cliff they’d been standing on top of minutes ago.

Enoch tried to focus on his breathing as they went on and on. Long breaths in and out. He ran his fingers along the wall at his side in an attempt to hold onto the one sense he felt he could still use in the darkness and nothingness. Miss Nightjar would speak from a few steps ahead of him every so often, assuring him there wasn’t far to go and they would be back in the open air soon but Enoch only grunted in response. After a full ten minutes without having any idea what direction they were walking in, the path suddenly took a definite incline and then, just as long as it had taken to descend, Enoch saw a light ahead of them. It was the moon, which seemed so bright after twenty minutes of pitch blackness that it unnerved him for a second before being shrouded by Miss Nightjar’s back ahead of him.

They scrambled back through a gap very similar to the one they had entered and, thoroughly disoriented, Enoch staggered around in a circle to try and get his bearings.

“But wh-”

He cut himself off and stared off behind the outcrop. There were lights, warm and welcoming that flooded from the old farmhouse that seemed eerily similar to the one they had just seen abandoned. Enoch pressed his eyes closed for a few seconds and then opened them again and really looked around at his surroundings. The house wasn’t the only thing that was the same. The rocky outcrop they had just vacated looked much the same, and he walked right around it twice to be sure. The meadow in front of them was no longer overgrown but newly mown and altogether pleasant looking.

“This isn’t…” He spun and stared at Miss Nightjar who was watching him with a small twitch of amusement on her lips. “Where are we?”

“Exactly where we were a half an hour ago, Enoch, you should be asking _when_ we are. To that, the answer is April 3 rd, 1901.”

He must have misheard her, or misunderstood or temporarily gone insane and was hallucinating. Enoch just stared at her like she was mad and before he could bother to bridle his tongue, simply blurted out, “What the bloody ‘ell does that mean? It’s 1909, you old bird.”

“Dear me, we’ll have to do something about your manners in time, young man.” Miss Nightjar cast a critical glance at him and shook her head before pointing to the house, now considerably larger and less weather beaten. “You’ve entered a time loop now, Enoch. There will be plenty of time to go into detail about this as well once we have you properly fed and cleaned up-Ah…that would be Nigel there…” She raised an arm in greeting and Enoch looked away from her towards the edge of the meadow and the large gate across the path that he hadn’t noticed half an hour ago was there at all.

A boy, who from his height Enoch guessed must have been around his own age, he couldn’t see much more in the dim night lighting, stood there at the gate holding something in his arms. As soon as Miss Nightjar waved, the boy did too and the thing, which Enoch now saw to be a rabbit, leapt from his arms as he turned around and ran back towards the house.

“Well…let’s go shall we?” Miss Nightjar nodded curtly to Enoch who was still staring at the house as if it had just leapt into existence from nothing, which it may as well have done, and strode off towards the house as he hurried to catch up.

“Enoch O’Connor, welcome to your new home.”


	12. 3rd April 1901

The house exuded warmth and safety in the smoke that puffed from the chimney and in the light that poured from its windows and the front door which was ajar since the boy with the rabbit had disappeared through it. From within Enoch could hear the bustle of activity and the scraping of chairs even from the doorstep where he stood behind Miss Nightjar as she swung the door open all the way.

The front hall had a homely atmosphere to it in itself. Coat hooks lined the white walls and below them was a line of muddy boots in all sizes. There was a doorway either side as Enoch hesitantly stepped over the threshold behind the woman. Almost immediately his senses were assaulted with a wave of noise and delicious smells that wafted from the room to the left of the entrance.

“Miss Nightjar’s back!”

“She’s back already!”

“And in time to eat with us!”

A whole assorted of different voices rang from the room and there was a scurry of feet before half a dozen children hurtled into the entrance and Enoch shrunk back a step as they ran to hug Miss Nightjar who was smiling and patting them warmly on the shoulders as they welcomed her home.

There were three boys and three girls, ranging from about seven to seventeen years of age at first glance. The boy whom Enoch had seen at the gate was among the older along with a red headed girl with freckles and eyes as blue as Enoch’s.

More faces were peering from the doorway of what Enoch assumed was the dining room alongside another woman who bore a great resemblance to Miss Nightjar only with more refined and pointed features. Something birdlike, much like Miss Nightjar, glinted in her eyes as she made eye contact with Enoch and smiled warmly at him.

“Who is this, Miss Nightjar?” One of the younger girls, who looked around twelve piped up and was joined immediately by a young girl and boy who spoke together.  
“Has he come to live with us too?”  
“Is he peculiar too? He has to be, doesn’t he to get here?”

“He doesn’t look it.”

“Look at his eyes. He looks more peculiar than you do, Alexander.”

“Alright, alright….settle down at once, children, I’m glad to be home with you all too.” Miss Nightjar clapped her hands and all the children hushed to listen to her.

“This is Enoch, and yes, he has come to live with us…”

All eyes in the room, and the children and woman watching from the doorway, turned to Enoch and he felt his ears burn furiously. The last thing he wanted was to be surrounded by a dozen people asking questions about him. Twelve hours ago he’d been in his own house in London watching the life leave his mother’s eyes.

A sudden gasp made everyone, including himself, look over at the red headed girl who was staring at him in such a strange way it unnerved Enoch and made him scowl at her.

“’e looks awful.” A boy with sandy hair who didn’t look much younger than Enoch whom he hadn’t noticed before, spoke up and Enoch realised that he was the only one amongst the crowd who looked distinctly odd. Scaly flaps of skin protruded from either side of his neck that moved slightly when he spoke.

“Alright that’s enough, all of you.” The other woman tutted from the doorway and placed her hands sternly on her hips. “You all know what it was like when you first got here, leave the poor boy alone and go finish your supper before it all goes cold. Nigel, would you go and draw a bath first, please?”  
There was a general buzz of grumbled agreement and a few of the children had the decency to look ashamed of themselves as they all turned away and filed back into the dining room save for the oldest boy who jogged off down the hall and up a flight of stairs.

“Thank you, Olivia.” Miss Nightjar sighed as the other matronly looking woman came over towards them. She held out a hand and motioned for Enoch to come closer which he did so only reluctantly. “Enoch? This is my sister Miss. Thrush.”

“Hello Enoch…I hope you’ll find everything to your liking here once we get you settled in.”

She had a kind voice and an equally kind smile that put Enoch a little more at ease enough to nod at her and hold her gaze for a second before looking back at the floor when she continued, “Why don’t you come with me now? You’ve had a very long day, I’m sure. Come along.”

Enoch looked back over his shoulder as he allowed her to lead him away down the hall in time to see Miss Nightjar nod encouragingly at him before clapping her hands together and following her wards into the dining room.

xxxXxxx

“I’m sure that right now you want to just sink into a nice bed and sleep…”

As if on cue, Enoch’s stomach growled again and he screwed up his nose as he followed Miss Thrush up the stairs at the rear of the large house. “Somefin’ ta eat might be good.” He mumbled and the woman ahead of him laughed softly, a very melodic sound like a bird’s song.

“There’ll be hot food waiting for you, Enoch….here,” She led him to a door just off the upstairs landing and opened it to reveal a cosy looking bedroom. Two beds with wire frames and soft looking mattresses were set up on opposite sides of the room against the white stone walls. There were two small chests of wooden drawers between them and on the far end of the room, a single wardrobe. A few books and a cap lay on the bed nearest the window and the drawers beside it were slightly open making it clear that side of the room had been claimed.  
“I hope you don’t mind, you’ll be sharing a room with Nigel, he’s about your age. Well…more or less.”   
Miss Thrush gestured to the second chest of drawers as Enoch looked around his new bedroom with a deadpan expression. “You should find clothes to fit you already there if you want to bring something. We’re running a nice hot bath for you now.”

Enoch pulled open the top drawer and started to glance through the shirts and trousers waiting ready for him. They weren’t at all unlike his own, at least that was something familiar.

“We’re not really in 1901 are we?” He asked finally through a slightly hoarse throat and looked over at the woman in the doorway who smiled kindly at him.

“We are indeed, it’s what we in the peculiar world call a time loop. A single date in history preserved to protect peculiars from those, or events, that would harm us-ah, Nigel.”

The boy, whose rabbit had vanished since Enoch had seen it with him running towards the house had appeared from around the corner.   
“Bath’s all drawn, Miss Thrush.” He looked past her into the room to his new roommate and tilted his head curiously. He’d just opened his mouth to address Enoch before Miss Thrush cleared her throat and gave him a pointed look.  
“Thank you Nigel, go and finish your supper now.”

Enoch was thankful that the other boy left without speaking to him yet. He didn’t want anything but to fill his stomach that had been empty all day, and be left alone to sleep, or just to brood. It was like living in a dream, he still wasn’t quite sure it was all real.

With an armful of clean clothes, he followed Miss Thrush around a corner to a bathroom.   
“We prefer to keep the boys to one bathroom and the girls to another while there are so many of you to use them.” Miss Thrush pushed open the door and stepped aside to reveal a stone bathtub filled with steaming hot water that had never looked more inviting to Enoch.

“We’ll let you get settled in your own time, Enoch, after all you have plenty of it now. Some food will be waiting in your room for you.” She smiled and cast a glance over his injuries. “Tomorrow you’ll meet the other children and we’ll have you fixed up as good as new in no time at all.”

With that Miss Thrush left him alone and closed the door.

Enoch sighed and enjoyed the first moment he had to himself since Miss Nightjar had found him hours ago. He dropped the pile of fresh clothing onto the floor by the sink and sat down onto the stool near the bathtub as he started to remove his ruined shirt and trousers.

The bath was almost too hot as he sunk down into it and groaned as it stung his welts and made the bruises throb once again. He closed his eyes and ducked his whole head under water only to come up spluttering with a pained wince.

The water was nearly cold by the time Enoch summoned the will to get out of the tub. As he dressed, he looked at himself into the mirror over the sink and despite the obvious damage done, he felt cleaner than he had in weeks, not just hours. His damp hair started to curl again in all directions as he rubbed a towel through it and left his old clothes in a pile in the corner.

A full plate of roasted vegetables and meat was sitting on his nightstand, still warm with a pitcher of water and a glass when Enoch went back to his room. Starving, he wolfed the meal down in minutes and had drained half of the water down with it. It wasn’t like the lumpy porridge and meat pies he was used to getting back in London, though he had known better than to complain about.

Enoch lay on his back on his bed for another full hour in silence before the door opened and Nigel, the oldest of the boys in the house came in.

He was tall, like Enoch, with an untidy mess of light brown hair and hazel eyes that looked over at Enoch curiously as he entered the room and sat down on his bed across from him to take his shoes off.

“I’m Nigel.”

“Enoch.” Enoch muttered and turned his head back to stare at the ceiling. He’d found nightclothes and everything else he could need already there in the drawers for him. It was as if they’d known they would find him. Another of the hundred questions he had to ask in the morning.

“How old are ye’?” Nigel asked, unfastening his bracers as he began to change into his own nightshirt.

Enoch didn’t really want to talk and introduce himself to the others yet. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep and forget. Only reluctantly did he reply,  
“I’m sixteen.”

“Ah…I’m twenty-five.”

Enoch couldn’t help it, his eyebrows shot up and he turned to stare weirdly at the other boy. “What? No you ain’t…no way.”

“Actually I am.” Nigel grinned, as if he’d been waiting for the opportunity to throw off somebody like that. He threw back the covers on his bed and sat back on the mattress. “I was here when the loop started. I was seventeen then. It’s s’posed to be 1909 now, right?”

“I _thought_ it was.” Enoch frowned, still staring strangely at the other boy who just laughed.

“You’ll get used to being in a loop quick enough. You’ll look sixteen forever now. So what can you do?”

Enoch did not want to talk about raising the dead now. He didn’t want to talk at all. The boy sighed and sat up so he could wriggle under the covers and ignored the question.

Nigel raised his eyebrows at his new roommate’s obvious dismissal of the question but shrugged it off. They had all been found by Miss Thrush or Miss Nightjar once, it had been new to all of them. From the look of Enoch, it hadn’t been easy for him either.

“Alright…fair enough.”

Enoch turned the knob on his oil lamp to extinguish the light and rolled over onto his side as Nigel’s light went out too. This bed, though there was a safe feeling about the whole place, felt foreign and unfamiliar to him. As he closed his eyes, Enoch’s mind drifted back to the last memories he would be left with of home. His father’s face, angry and scared as he rained blows on Enoch. His sister’s face, crying for their father to stop it, and laughing when Enoch made her doll dance. His mother, telling him to let her go as life faded from her for the second time.

He didn’t want to cry again and clenched his eyes shut tighter against the wetness that stung them as his shoulders shuddered under the blankets.

xxxXxxx

By the time Enoch left the bedroom the next morning in and navigated his own way downstairs to the dining room, it was a hive of activity. The dining room was long with an exposed kitchen at one end of it where Miss Thrush and three of the children were moving around getting breakfast ready and carrying large dishes of toast and pots of porridge to the table at which the rest of the children and Miss Nightjar all sat chattering amongst themselves.

In total there were nine children, including those carrying dishes and utensils to the table, and the two matronly looking women who cared for them. Enoch just leaned in the doorway, unsure what to do with himself when Miss Nightjar caught sight of him from her seat at the end of the long table and waved him over.

“Do come in, Enoch, don’t be shy now. Have a seat.”

All conversation stopped and all the eyes in the room turned curiously to Enoch again as he muttered a quiet, “I’m not shy” and stepped over to the far side of the table to sit on the end of the long bench beside the boy with the protruding neck flaps and the empty seat that he assumed would be taken by Miss Thrush.

“I think introductions will be in or-” Miss Nightjar cut herself off and a few of the younger children burst into laughter. Enoch leaned forward over the table to see what they were laughing about. A rabbit had leaped seemingly from nowhere and onto the edge of the table beside Miss Nightjar where it snuffled its nose happily.  
“Nigel, what have we told you about this? Outside, at once! And then wash your hands before you eat.”

“He just wants a bit’a toast, Miss. N…” Nigel’s sheepish face peered out from the middle of the bench and he clambered over to run around and pick up the furry, sand coloured rabbit from the table. “Sorry, Peter…”

“Animals on the breakfast table indeed…now where are your manners, children? Introduce yourselves.”

The first voice to pipe up was a little dark haired girl with hazel eyes who beamed happily at Enoch across the table. “I’m Victoria, I’m eight years old, really I’m thirteen, and I can…umm…move things.”  
To demonstrate she raised her right hand out in front of her and a moment later a pitcher of milk went sliding down the table seemingly of its own accord and skidded to a stop at the end where it teetered dangerously on the edge until Miss Thrush rescued it as she assumed her seat.   
Victoria blushed and lowered her hand. “I’m still practicing.”

Enoch’s jaw dropped the slightest bit, much to amusement of a pair of blonde boys at the other end of the table whom Miss Nightjar raised a warning eyebrow at and they stopped at once.

“You can all…do stuff like that?” Enoch asked, suddenly finding his voice again and eight faces all grinned at him in response, accompanied by the occasional announcement.   
“Kind of, I can run really fast, I’m Alexander.” Chimed in the older of the snickering boys and puffed out his chest proudly.

Enoch was distinctly less impressed than he had been with Victoria and just stared at him before turning to the sandy haired twelve year old beside him.   
“What’s that on your neck?”

The boy, who until now hadn’t said a word, raised his eyebrows at Enoch like he thought he was stupid and pointed to the scaly flaps on his neck. “Gills, o’course.” His accent was as Cockney as Enoch’s and for a moment, just one, Enoch was sure he seemed oddly familiar.   
“What like a fish?”

“Yeah, to breathe underwater…whatcha fink?”

“Oscar, manners now…” Miss Thrush chided and the boy with the gills sighed and started to ladle porridge into a bowl as the other children began to help themselves when the last of them sat down at the table.

Nigel reappeared, sans the rabbit, and slunk back into his spot on the bench as Enoch began to spread jam over a piece of toast while one by one, the children continued to introduce themselves. Some insisted on telling their ‘real’ ages as well as their peculiarities whilst others, like Elizabeth, Earnest and Darcy only said their names.  
The only girl left was the sixteen year old red headed girl who had gasped when Enoch walked in the night before.  She was sitting right across from Enoch and silently buttering slices of toast before he glanced over at her and raised an eyebrow.

“What do you do then?”

“I’m Cara.”

Enoch had not been expecting an Irish accent and his eyebrows shot up in surprise when she spoke.   
Her eyes bored into his suddenly with the same peculiar stare she’d given him the night before, as if her blue eyes were drilling right into his head.  
“Why shouldn’t I be Irish? Somethin’ the matter with that?”

“No-what? I didn’ say nofin.”

A few snickers sounded down the table and Enoch caught sight of both Victoria and Nigel hiding their laughter behind cups of milk.

“Cara can read minds, Enoch.” Miss Thrush kindly clarified when Enoch’s eyes shot back to Cara who had a small smile on her freckled face as she resumed eating.

“You can _what_? All the time?”

“Only if I want to.” The girl looked back up at Enoch who looked slightly unnerved, despite the array of peculiarities around the table. “ _That’s_ what hard to believe?”

“What about you, Enoch?” Cecilia, a blonde girl physically ten years old and whose entire torso had become metal, asked curiously as bowls were scraped clean.

“Yeah, how are you peculiar?” Alexander piped up beside Miss Nightjar and a general buzz of agreement and curiosity filled the air as everyone turned to the new boy.

Enoch’s head throbbed painfully and he was unpleasantly reminded of his bruises just as prominent, if not more so than the day before. He reached up to touch his slightly swollen jaw as he forced down a last bite of breakfast and looked into everyone’s expectant faces.

“I uh…bring back dead fings.”

A few of the girls pulled faces and a mixture of expressions of disgust and interest passed around the peculiars.

“A kind of necrokinesis, if you will.” Miss Nightjar chimed in on his behalf as if hoping to assuage some of the other’s children’s hesitancy at Enoch’s unusual habit.

Enoch momentarily forgot to look cross with them and stared down the table along with a few of the others. “A kind of what?”

“Manipulation and communication with the deceased. Limited, perhaps, but similar.”

“That didn’t make it sound any less gross, Miss N.” Oscar, the boy with the gills, added to a general hum of agreement and laughter.

“It can have quite impressive results really, I’ve witnessed it myself.”

“ _When_?” Enoch was too busy trying to work out how to say whatever the name was that Miss Nightjar had given his abilities to notice the uncertainty on the faces of half of the children. “Oh right…the bird fing…it ain’t just dead bodies though, it’s other fings too.”

xxxXxxx

Ymbryne. Timeloop. 1901. Peculiar. Wards. All sorts of terms and dates and years were thrown around all at once in Enoch’s head that he thought he might explode when he was sat down in a little office with both Miss Thrush and Miss Nightjar. They really were in 1901, there was a newspaper that sat for years on the desk with just the same date, April 3rd 1901, and just the same news as the day repeated itself over and over again.           
Within the loop, that apparently only peculiar people could enter, the peculiars it protected could live a continuous experience forever without ever aging a day, though the conditions of the date in question remained just the same. In contrast, any normals within the repeated day would remember nothing and wake up each morning to tread exactly the steps they had trod before. So that in case a peculiar should accidentally reveal themselves they would not be remembered upon the resetting of the loop.

Enoch did not completely understand at all, although he nodded in all the right spots and pretended that he did so he would not have to sit through a peculiar history lesson a second time. He had a stinging ointment applied to his face and neck that softened into a soothing balm after applying. Most peculiars arrived in this condition, he had been told, chased from their homes or abandoned by frightened families who only wanted normal children.

The ymbrynes had made it their duty to travel and find peculiars in need to give them a home and a place of protection. The education of the younger ones fell into their hands and as such there was a little school room at the back of the house where either Miss Thrush or Miss Nightjar would teach them.

Enoch was told little of what peculiars needed protection from outside of the more violent normals. The information he could gather only implied they were hunted by some creature, man or beast he wasn’t sure and when he asked, Miss Nightjar pursed her lips and would change the subject.  
“When you need to know, Enoch.” She had said to his distaste.

April 3rd 1901 in Swansea, Wales was a brisk spring day where the same wind blew again and again over the Cliffside meadows and hills and a soft shower always occurred between five and six in the afternoon each day. The countryside was so vastly unfamiliar to Enoch, who had lived in the busy city of London his whole life that he thought even real fresh air would take some getting used to in contrast to smoky, disease ridden streets of East London and the foul scent of the Thames.

He was shown around by Nigel, who Enoch learned could communicate with animals when he suddenly began to have a conversation with a sheep; Elizabeth, a fifteen year old who had only been in the loop for two years herself and was so flexible she might have been boneless, and Earnest, a Welsh fourteen year old who wore special gloves to prevent his hands sticking to anything they touched like glue.

xxxXxxx

“Will you show us what you do?”

“Yeah, I want to see it!”

Enoch had finally escaped the company of so many new faces to be by himself for a few minutes wandering near the outcrop that was the entrance to the loop. He hadn’t even heard the two people following him and turned around with a slightly annoyed sigh. Alexander and Cecilia stood behind him, looking up expectantly and with an interest in his power that Enoch was not accustomed to seeing.

“Where’d you co-hey!” Before he could even finish his thought, the blonde boy had vanished, leaving Cecilia giggling and Enoch looking bemused suddenly.

“I _told_ you I was fast.”

Enoch spun around and his eyebrows shot up to see Alexander now perched on top of the rock swinging his legs casually as if he’d been there all along.   
“So…” He continued, albeit a little pompously. “Will you show us or not?”

“Sure.” Enoch rolled his eyes and took a few steps away as Cecilia moved around him to stand by the rock. “Just bring me a couple’a dead fings.”

“Oh…is that what you need?”

“Well it’s a bit less impressive ta make a livin’ thing live more, ain’t it? And I don’t fink a little girl like you would like it much.”

“I’m fifteen actually!” The ten year old looking Cecilia chimed in indignantly and rapped a fist against her stomach with a reverberating clang. “And I don’t get sick.”

“Hooray for you.” Enoch kicked a stone which went clattering towards the edge of the cliff and turned his back on them to start stomping back towards the house.

The peculiars were widely distributed through the afternoon, so when Enoch sunk into an armchair in what he thought was the empty living room he thought he had escaped being peppered with questions without having to withdraw into his room. He stared out the window at the few boys and girls that ran past kicking a football between them. Not since his school days had he been surrounded by more than a few children or people his own age at all for any length of time. Despite his mother’s wishes, he had never so much as tried to make any friends. Here there was no escaping all the people, no matter how much he might want to. Still, even despite his lack of social skills and the slightly overwhelming situation he’d plunged into, Enoch could not deny the atmosphere of safety that far exceeded any he’d felt in London.

“You’ll adjust soon enough to the loop, it’s safe here for people like us.”

Enoch jumped, torn from his thoughts by the sudden Irish brogue of Cara whom he hadn’t noticed was sitting behind a desk at the far end of the room scribbling something in a notebook. He opened his mouth to ask how she’d known what he was thinking before he remembered and sighed at her.  
“Do ya mind?”

Cara didn’t answer the question but the peculiar stare she had been giving Enoch softened considerably before she spoke again.

“I’m sorry about your mother. Your father did that to you didn’t he?”

Enoch, whose gaze had turned back to the window, stiffened suddenly and a muscle in his neck twitched as he slowly rotated his head to stare icily at the Irish girl. “I wasn’t even thinkin’ that.” He snapped. “How d-”

“You were last night when ya got here.”

“Well that ain’t any concern o’yours, is it?” Bidden by the Irishwoman’s words, Enoch’s mind immediately flooded with the images he desperately wanted to forget but knew he never would. He leapt to his feet impatiently and with such force the chair scraped backwards a few centimetres on the wooden floor. “Get outta my ‘ead.”

 


	13. 3rd April 1901 - The Beginning

“I thought you said it was dead things you brought to life?”

“Never said it ‘ad to ‘ave been breathing once, did I?”

It was the first time Enoch had used his power in the four days it had been since he’d arrived in the loop and pressing his thumb to the crumbly, makeshift homunculus had felt like a long awaited relief. The burst of energy he’d felt in the centre of his chest far exceeded any other time he’d brought a clay man to life and he was sure the mouse heart within was beating twice as fast as it usually did.

It was strange to do it in the open, before the eyes of half a dozen curious others like he was putting on a show. Which, in a weird way, he supposed he was. They had all demonstrated their peculiarities, Victoria’s telekinesis somewhat clumsily, and now it was his turn. Enoch left out the visual demonstration of ripping out a dead mouse’s heart and skipped right to animating the already completed creature. Not least because Nigel, whose connection with animals made him particularly irritable at the idea of even eating beef, was present and even Enoch thought he could go at least a week without completely alienating himself from everybody in the house.

He’d fashioned an inferior sort of clay from the sand and crumbling cliff face but it was adequate enough to do until he found a better way of making it work. The homunculus, the size of Enoch’s outstretched hand, leapt from the arm of the chair on which Enoch had sat it, and performed an impressive somersault much to the enjoyment of Victoria, Cecilia and Darcy who were watching with keen interest to see what Enoch really could do.

“I suppose it’s kind of interesting.” Nigel, sitting on the windowsill as the five o’clock shower of rain commenced like clockwork, spoke up and raised an eyebrow over at the other older boy in the house. “Not quite what I expected.”

“Hey, that’s not _all_ I do.” Enoch added a little defensively, not wanting the others to think he was just some animator of children’s toys. “I _do_ bring back dead stuff-oi!” The homunculus chose that moment to make a break for it and Enoch whistled sharply before the over energised puppet could make it more than a few metres away. It dropped its shoulders accordingly and, very humanlike, seemed to slouch as it returned to Enoch’s command.

“Like animals and things? That’s what you told me.” Cecilia piped up where she was sitting cross legged on the floor.

“Yes, and me!”

Cecilia screamed and a few of the other kids jumped as Alexander appeared seemingly from nowhere right up behind the younger girl.

“Miss Thrush told you not to scare people!”

“Oh, twaddle. So animals and things, yes?” Alexander, not bothered in the least that he had put half of the room on edge again, addressed Enoch coolly.

“Yeah…animals…” Enoch snorted. He was beginning to tire of the endless questions, “There, done…you’ve seen it now.”

“What about people?” Nigel asked, seeming far more interested now than he had yet and all eyes in the room turned back to Enoch who leaned over the arm of his chair and arched a dark brown eyebrow over at the older boy.

“…yeah. It’s easy.”

Young Victoria screwed up her nose and a vase of flowers on the mantelpiece shuddered and wobbled dangerously in its place. “Dead people? That’s creepy…”

“Ain’t no worse than an animal once it’s dead. Not really any different.”

“It’s totally different.” Another Cockney accent joined the conversation and nobody had to look to know it was the sour faced and gilled Oscar who strode in behind them with a slightly uppity air about him. “’oo plays around wiv dead bodies? Besides undertakers an’all.”

Enoch looked coldly at him. Of all the children in the house, including the maddeningly curious Cara with her mind games, he sincerely disliked Oscar from his sandy coloured hair to his feet that Enoch would not have been surprised to discover were webbed.  
“Well I was one so…guess that means, me.”

A few eyebrows were raised amongst the others and Alexander and Cecilia exchanged glances as the two boys from East London stared each other down. Even Oscar had apparently not been expecting to hear that as he seemed to hesitate on whatever attempt at a witty remark he’d been about to make.  
“Oh…well that’s still pretty disgustin’ if ye ask me.”

“No one asked you.” Cecilia snapped before Enoch could say the same thing and he glanced at her mildly surprised to see his own dislike of Oscar mirrored on the faces of several others.

“ _I’m_ disgustin’?”

“That’s what I said, ain’t it? Corpses and death? ‘Oo would want that peculiari-”

Enoch had gotten to his feet, accidentally kicking over his homunculus in the process and crushing one of its clay legs to dirt beneath his shoe. He was considerably taller than Oscar and glowered down at him, too proud to sit there and be called names by anyone.  
“ _I’m_ disgustin’?” He repeated through clenched teeth, “Pot callin’ the kettle black, ain’t it, Fish Boy?” He heard someone snicker behind him and didn’t care in the least whether they were on his side or Oscar’s. With one hand he shoved the smaller boy in the chest and strode past him towards the front door into the shower of rain.

xxxXxxx

Enoch had to take classes like the rest of the children. He had never liked school when he was younger and having left it at twelve years old, he had still had more education than his father. Having to revisit the idea of a classroom environment at sixteen irritated him. It wasn’t that he wasn’t capable of reading and writing the King’s English as well as any other kid, he had just never been interested in getting any better than he had to be to get by. He was sure that his East London speech patterns were the equivalent of nails scraping on a chalkboard to the ever properly spoken Miss Nightjar. “There is no ‘k’ in the word ‘nothing’, Mr. O’Connor.”  
But the cane was spared here, and no one made fun of him for being the weird boy who had no friends, and Enoch begrudgingly consented, as if he really had a choice, to learn. It was more interested too, than reciting times tables and poetry as the schooling curriculum employed by Miss Nightjar and Miss Thrush consisted in equal parts of regular schooling and the lore and history of the peculiars, or in what was apparently the ‘old tongue’, _syndrigasti_. Even Enoch took more interest in that than in Latin.

Despite the confines of the time and the area, there was no shortage of things to keep children busy and entertained. Once a week, one of the ymbrynes would take a group of those children who blended in most easily into Swansea for market, an opportunity they all thoroughly looked forward to. There was a beach walking distance that, in the warmest part of the day, the peculiars frequented with the youngest under supervision of Cara or Nigel, being the eldest. Enoch only joined them the first time on Miss Thrush’s insistence when the children were putting swimsuits on beneath their clothes and the youngest gossiped excitedly as if they hadn’t been to the same beach and the same ocean countless times.  
“It can only do you good, Enoch, to get out with the others. Off you go now, you won’t be the only one staying back if I have anything to say about it and I have a great deal.” Miss Thrush smiled as if she found herself far more amusing than Enoch did. Nevertheless, he dragged his feet out the door at the rear of the cheerful group as they headed towards the cliffs.

“You can’t swim, can ye?”

“’ow many times ‘ave I said not to do that?” The sixteen year old sighed when Cara dropped back a few paces to walk beside him. Though it hadn’t been what he was thinking about at all.

“I didn’t.” The Irish girl arched a red eyebrow and looked curiously at Enoch out of the corner of her light eyes. She wore a simple blue dress over her swimming costume, the sleeves of which peeked out from her dress as she walked. Her red hair fell past her shoulders in waves that fluttered slightly in the breeze from the ocean as the group walked along the cliffs. “You’re from the city, I just guessed it that time.”

She was right, of course. Enoch couldn’t swim. The only sizeable body of water he’d been in contact with was the River Thames and no one in their right mind would have wanted to swim in that. He’d never needed to learn, and who would he have learnt from? None of his family could swim that he knew about. Just the sight of the waves tossing and washing up on the sand was foreign enough for Enoch ever to consider wanting to learn to swim in it.  
Cara appeared to take his silence for Enoch tolerating her company and continued, “Well you’ll have a long time ta learn. You’ll have ta eventually, the Birds will make sure’a it. Most of us had to learn when we came ta the loop.”

“Are you still talking?”

“You could be polite, you know, never hurt anyone.”

“Don’t feel like takin’ the chance.” Enoch shrugged but looked at her out of the corner of his eye when he didn’t think she was looking. Cara was a very pretty girl, though complimenting young ladies was not something Enoch was well practiced in, nor a habit he was likely to commence. None of the girls he’d bothered to pay attention to in London had graced him with more than a scornful laugh or a turned up nose. If it weren’t for Cara’s very invasive peculiarity, he might have secretly enjoyed her company.

Cara’s lip twitched the tiniest bit and for moment Enoch was horror struck that she might have just seen his thoughts again. But she looking forward, and hadn’t looked directly at him which he knew now that she needed to do. The boy relaxed and banished any potentially flattering thoughts from his brain as he kicked a loose stone away.

They walked until they reached a rocky slope descending at a shallow decline to a cove below. A few at a time, taking care not to slip on loose stones, the children descended. All save for Earnest who removed his gloves and scaled down the cliff face with his adhesive fingertips like a nimble little chipmunk to reach the bottom far ahead of the others. Towels were flung to the side over rocks and onto sand in piles as the children, all apparently keen to swim, rushed to the water in their shorts and the girls, in long, modest swimming costumes.

Oscar was quite literally in his element in the water, and took great joy in staying under the water for long periods of time before grabbing some unsuspecting peculiar by the ankle and terrifying them, despite the constant chastising he received in return.

Cecilia was the only one, aside from Enoch who didn’t so much as remove his shoes, who stayed sitting on a large rock on the shore. She watched a little forlornly as the others splashed around in the shallows and only went to the water to stand up to her ankles in the wash. She couldn’t go into the water for fear of rusting and so had to content herself with splashing in the shallows until one of the others took pity on her and came to keep her company.

A gull flew overhead, its narrow shadow coasting over Enoch and making him look up as it squawked and collided stupidly with the cliff face. It toppled to the sand where it flapped with one useless wing in agony. The same bird that broke the same wing in the same way day after day. Enoch pushed himself up from his seat on a rock in the warm sun and wandered over to the shade of the cliff where the bird was squawking pathetically and staggering around. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the others, none of whom he thought were watching and bent down to pick up the struggling gull. Its pained squawking intensified and with some difficulty, Enoch clapped a hand around its beak and held it shut after suffering several hard nips and pecks that made him hiss in pain himself.  
It wasn’t going to live anyway, its wing was useless and really he’d just be putting the pathetic thing out of its misery. Without thinking twice about it, Enoch snapped the bird’s neck and felt it instantly go limp and lifeless in his hands.

He dropped to his knees on the stones and sand and pulled a little knife out of his pocket. Spreading the dead bird out on its back, wings outstretched and behind a rock out of view, Enoch sliced a clean line down its feathered body. Rolling up his sleeves, he pinched his thumb and forefinger together and squished them inside the opening.

“What are you doing over here?”

Enoch jumped and cursed to himself as the flexible girl, Elizabeth’s voice sounded from over his shoulders.

“None of your business, Bendy.” But it was too late to hide the autopsy he was performing on the gull as she twisted right around him curiously, her blonde hair falling into his face as she did and making him hastily withdraw his fingers from the bird with a little heart between them.

“Oh by the Bird…” She gasped and pulled a disgusted face as she practically leapt away from him. “What the hell is _that_?”

“What’s it look like?” Enoch grumbled and held out the organ towards her only to watch her jump backwards unnerved. “’ow d’you fink I bring fings to life?” He didn’t bother to explain himself any further, it was going to be common knowledge eventually anyway. It was just what he did, Enoch didn’t see anything wrong with it at all and tucked the little heart into his trouser pocket for later use.

Ignoring the still slightly sickened look on Elizabeth’s face, Enoch curled his hands into fists to better hide the blood on his fingers as he strode towards the ocean and bent down to clean his fingers as subtly as he could.

xxxXxxx

Days blurred into weeks and into months so quickly that it was extremely difficult to keep a track of the dates as they would be passing in 1909. Where it was still, and would forever be, April 3rd, 1901, it was now the beginning of 1910 in the present. Few glimpses were allowed of the world outside of the Loop, and only ever for a few minutes at a time, never into town or within sight of people. It was a rule strictly enforced and never broken.

Some children, Nigel and Darcy among them, liked to keep track of the dates and Enoch could not possibly have failed to notice his roommate’s habit of adding a mark, or a word to a large book in which he had apparently noted each day as it passed in the present for the last seven years.

Evidently the ymbrynes, being time manipulators themselves, were very aware of how much time transpired and birthdays were always observed. In the months that Enoch had lived in the Loop, Victoria had seen her fourteenth birthday, though she was immortalised here in the body of an eight year old, and Cara, her twentieth. No presents were exchanged, but each birthday merited a special cake baked by Miss Thrush herself and adorned with little wax candles.

Enoch’s seventeenth birthday came and went with December which, much to his annoyance and distaste, attention was drawn to in the same manner as everyone else. To escape the unwanted, and to Enoch entirely unnecessary, ordeal, he rudely left the table and vanished into the evening to make homunculi by himself. Unsurprisingly it earned him a chastising by Miss Nightjar for his rudeness to which Enoch paid no heed whatsoever.

It was the end of winter 1910 when the rule that was never to be broken, was bent a little.

“Oi…”

Enoch’s thumb paused over the clay chest of a homunculus the size of his hand where he had been about to give it life when the bedroom door opened and closed at the other side of the room and Nigel came in. Enoch turned and looked over his shoulder, hooking an eyebrow up in expectation as the older boy sat down on his bed with a squeak of springs.  
“What?”

The scruffy haired boy cast a furtive glance at the closed door before flashing a very fox-like grin at Enoch. “Keep your voice down if anyone can hear, but we’re gonna get a look out tonight.”

It took Enoch a moment to work out what he meant by that but the moment he did his other eyebrow shot up and disappeared behind the curls hanging over his forehead. After a few months of living in the Loop, Miss Thrush had declared that Enoch had been in need of a haircut since he arrived, which he had quite probably been overdue for many months before hand, and all but forced him into a chair to neaten and trim his hair into what she deemed presentable for a young man.   
“You’re what?” He asked, more than a little surprised at what Nigel had just suggested.

“Get a look out…you know, outta the Loop tonight. Not for long, you gotta be out for quite a while ‘fore age starts catching up.”

Enoch still stared at him dumbly. He had picked Nigel Adersee as a stickler for the rules, except perhaps where his animals in the house were concerned. “ _You_?” He sneered doubtfully and when Nigel opened his mouth to contest the remark, Enoch quickly added. “Nah, nah, nah…whose idea was it?”

The older boy closed his mouth and his ears rapidly reddened much to Enoch’s amusement as he looked over Enoch’s head at the wall and muttered quietly, “Liz...”

“Right, that sounds more like it.” Enoch snorted and rolled his blue eyes. In recent months Nigel and Elizabeth had  become something of an item. They had begun to slip off together when they hoped not to be noticed, when in reality, _everyone_ noticed. They almost exclusively sat together at meals and concocted blatantly transparent excuses to go off alone which didn’t even fool the youngest children.

“Anyway, that’s beside the point. Are you in?” Nigel quickly dismissed Enoch’s comments with a wave of his hand and his hazel eyes drifted over to the pile of clay that was half a battalion of Enoch’s soldiers. “When the Birds have gone to their nest, so ta speak. Liz sai-I mean, they shouldn’t even know we’ve been gone.”

“You _want_ someone ta crash yer date? I ain’t playin’ chaperone.”

“It’s not-do you wanna come or not? Just us three, any more than that and someone’s gonna blab.”

Enoch considered the idea. The future wasn’t so distant for him as it was for the others, and even then, little had changed between 1901 and 1909 enough to be significant. He suspected it was born more from a desire to leave the Loop for a little while than to see the present day. But the idea of breaking the rules for a little while appealed to his nature too much to resist.

“Yeah…alright.”

 

It was after midnight when a little tapping on the window and a muted _hoot_ roused Nigel and Enoch both from their silent stupor in their beds. Nigel sprang to his knees on the mattress and opened the window to admit a handsome barn owl which hopped onto the windowsill and addressed him directly in its own language.

“Charles says their asleep now, come on, let’s go.” Nigel hissed across the room to Enoch who had already thrown back his covers and sat still fully dressed on his bed.

Enoch shook his head at Nigel as they both slipped on and laced up their shoes.  
“Charles? Do you name every bloody fing?”

“I don’t need to name them, they already have names. And you name your…things…”

“I do not, I give em ranks, they’re soldiers after all.”

Grabbing their coats and hanging them over their arms, the two boys slipped quietly out the door and down the stairs silently. Every creak of the floorboards underfoot seemed magnified in the otherwise silent house as they snuck downstairs into the entrance way.

Elizabeth was waiting there for them, wearing her coat and boots and an excited smile, but she wasn’t alone and Nigel had to look twice when they saw Cara standing there beside her.  
“Wha-”

“She knew was I was I doing. Cara and I don’t have many secrets, she wanted to come too.” Elizabeth hissed and Cara bounced on the balls of her feet and grinned when Enoch sighed in response.  
“I suppose no one’s got many secrets from you, ‘ey?”

“I can’t help it sometimes.” She whispered in her Irish lilted voice and Enoch was about to respond before Nigel shushed them and opened the door.  
“Okay, okay, whatever. But let’s go before the Birds wake up. Come on.”

The group didn’t speak until they were halfway across the field between the house and the Loop entrance when Cara chimed in from where she had fallen into step with Elizabeth right behind the boys. “You don’t really think much ‘as changed do ye?”

“It’s only a few years for me,” Elizabeth shrugged, “No I don’t think so. I just thought it would be fun to get out. No one’s going to know.”

It had been far less again for Enoch who had been tempted to join in solely by the prospect of bending the rules a little, and possibly, if he could manage to do so, replenish his stock of hearts somewhat or at least exercise his peculiarity.

They entered the rocky opening in single file with Nigel at the head followed by Elizabeth, Cara and Enoch at the rear until finally they emerged into the bitter sea side chill of winter.

“Look at the house!” Cara said, loudly over the wind and shower of rain they had emerged into and the other all turned to look at the dilapidated, abandoned ruin that was the fine, warm farmhouse they lived in.

“You ‘ad to pick a night it was rainin’…” Enoch grumbled and flicked up the collar of his coat.

“You can go back in you’re just going to complain.” Elizabeth snapped, “I want to see what the house is like now!” She made the executive decision on behalf of the four of them by grabbing onto Nigel’s unresisting wrist and pulling him along behind her as she jumped over the remains of the gate and started to march through the overgrown meadow separating them from some form of shelter.

“Don’t look much like anyfin’.” Enoch muttered as they stumbled through the overgrown hay and through the doorway where the front door had been torn from its hinges and lay flat on the floor.

“It’s dry though.” Nigel said quietly and Enoch looked around at the others with a frown. A distant, curious sort of expression had formed on their faces, as if looking at something that was only half familiar. Enoch suspected they’d never been in the house on this side of the Loop before.

“I know…” Cara said after a moment, answering someone’s thoughts aloud and Nigel placed a foot on the stairs onto to sink ankle deep into it as the water logged and rotten wood cracked beneath his boot.

They took seats on the floor in what remained of the sitting room where Nigel and Elizabeth promptly entwined themselves closely together, to wait out the worst of the wind and the rain, unless within the hour that Cara suggested they stick to, it had not stopped and they would be forced to return to the Loop just to be sure.

“If you could keep the snoggin’ to a minimum, I’d be mighty grateful.” Enoch rolled his eyes at the teenagers from where he sat apart from the others leaning up against a ruined couch.  
Nigel pulled a face as Elizabeth pushed back his soaked hair from his eyes and snorted at Enoch’s surliness.  
“I think you’re just jealous.”

“Not particularly.”

“But just a little.” Everyone turned to look at Cara and three pairs of eyebrows raised at her when she promptly turned pink and hastened to clarify. “Not _me_. I meant Enoch.”

Nigel and Elizabeth’s heads swivelled back to Enoch again as if watching some ball game and Nigel’s lips twitched as he struggled not to start laughing. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

Enoch was still staring at Cara like she had sprouted a second head. “’Scuse me? I ain’t no such fing.”

“Oh. My mistake.” She shrugged casually and turned her intense gaze around the room, pretending to be keenly interested in the crumbling stone.

“Anyone _ever_ tell you about this thing called _privacy_ , love?” Enoch snapped, his ears undeniably pink in embarrassment and, not for the first time, he found himself despising the red head’s peculiarity.

“So she _is_ right?” Elizabeth chirped gleefully and snaked around Nigel in a position that looked thoroughly uncomfortable, to get a better look at Enoch’s rapidly reddening face. “The Tin Man _does_ have emotions.”

Enoch got to his feet and stormed from the room in a huff, throwing a surly glare at Cara and conjuring an obscene gesture to the forefront of his mind should she be inclined to read it again. Cara blanched and shot him a disgusted look in return to make it clear she had seen it.

He stomped over the fallen front door and out into the wind and rain, which had lessened ever so slightly. Enoch intended to go right back to the Loop and be by himself, no longer in the mood for exploring the present day, or night, with a group of people who thought they knew him after a matter of months.  However he didn’t get further than a matter of metres in front of the house before the high pitched and desperate scream of some unfortunate creature pierced the night.


	14. 3rd April 1901- The Loop

 

** 3rd April 1901 – The Loop **

There was a thunder of footsteps in the house and the other three peculiars burst through the doorway behind Enoch. Even over the wind, the cry had been loud and terrible, like half a dozen pigs being gutted alive.

“What the hell was that?” Cara just managed to gasp out before Nigel pushed past both the girls and Enoch and sprinted around the side of the dilapidated house before Elizabeth could do more than call his name. They ran after him, Enoch’s anger and embarrassment forgotten for the moment as the wind whipped through his hair and beat his coat against his sides.

“Nigel! Wait!” Elizabeth and Cara shouted together as they sloshed through mud and heather in the surrounding meadows after Nigel’s sprinting form a ways ahead of them. Enoch was faster and pulled ahead of the girls with ease as they struggled to keep up in their skirts. Suddenly, a ways ahead of them, Nigel’s form dropped like a stone and vanished from view amongst the long grass.

It didn’t take long for Enoch to catch up and skid to a muddy halt behind Nigel. He doubled over to catch his breath and rested his hands on his thighs to support himself as he sighed and panted. “What the ‘ell d’you fink your doin’?”

“Shut up.”

The immediate coldness of Nigel’s voice made Enoch raise his eyebrows and scoff, slightly offended as he straightened himself up and closed the gap to look over a kneeling Nigel’s shoulder. He saw immediately what had Nigel, the animal empath, so upset so quickly. Two little ponies, extremely common in these parts of Wales, lay unmoving on the ground. At least, one was unmoving. Nigel had his hand on the chestnut head of the second as it breathed weakly and nickered softly. Its thick coat was red with blood from its flank where it had near been torn in two. Enoch was suddenly reminded of the dead horse he’d found in London that had been the beginning of all the trouble he’d gotten himself into.

“Shh…” Nigel was whispering to it, almost bent double over the pony and muttered soft words into its ear to soothe the dying animal. At that moment, the girls caught up and splashed in the puddles up to Enoch’s side. They both screamed and clapped their hands over their mouths. Enoch cringed at the noise but otherwise ignored their presence and bent down on the other side of the pony, the only one of the group completely unperturbed at the bloody sight.

Nigel had lifted its head gently into his lap and was still murmuring quietly into its ear as he smoothed its soaked mane tenderly like it was a child. His presence had calmed the panicking creature and its terrified nickers had quietly into barely audible huffs and snorts until, after less than a minute of clinging to what little life it had, it breathed its last and Nigel very gently laid its head back in the grass. The boy doubled over with a groan, clutching his stomach like it was physically paining him to witness a pony’s death. Tremors ran through his shoulders and it was plain that he was trying very hard not to start crying.  
While Elizabeth knelt down beside Nigel, and Cara turned her head away, unable to keep looking at the scene Enoch moved over to the second pony. Unlike the other, this one had not been ripped apart, save for a little scratch on one of its rear legs, it was unscathed and stared glassily at nothing. A familiar temptation struck Enoch and he looked over his shoulder at the cut up pony. He could finally use his power for something larger than a homunculus. He hadn’t been able to do so in months and, while he did have enough access to mice and birds, he hadn’t had many opportunities for larger hearts. He stood up and stepped around to the chest of the first dead horse.

“What are you doing?” Elizabeth asked from his shoulder and Enoch saw Nigel lift his head from her shoulder to stare at him before suddenly lashing out and hitting away Enoch’s outstretched hand.  
“Yeah, what _are_ you doing? Don’t touch it!”

“Relax, it’s already pretty dead.” Enoch hissed, and shouldered closer to the body. He pulled his knife from his pocket, and rolled his jacket and shirt sleeves, thoroughly drenched though they were, up to his elbow before starting to reach inside the animal.  
Both of the girls jerks backwards away from him and the horse, Elizabeth had caught him once, doing the same thing to a seagull but there was a sizeable difference between the two animals. Nigel blanched and groaned sickly at the sight of Enoch burying his hand, halfway to the elbow, in the horse.  
“What the _hell_ is wrong with you?” The older boy seethed as Enoch groped around for his target and made eye contact with Nigel, looking quite exasperated.

“Nofin’s wrong with me. You did your fing with it, I’m doin’ mine.”

“My peculiarity isn’t disrespecting a body!”

“Disrespec-it’s a bloomin’ ‘orse.” Enoch scoffed and suddenly pulled his hand free, the pony’s heart in his grip.

“He had a name! It was Sion! He was a living thing and he deserv-”

“Would you shut it? It’s dead. ‘Ow about you ask the other one what ‘er name is instead in a moment?”

“Oh by the Bird…” Cara groaned behind them and looked sick as she saw what Enoch was holding.

Enoch paid no heed to any of them and stepped around the pony to the other where he immediately drew a precise cut down its middle with his knife and reached inside again much to Nigel’s offence.

“Were you a butcher or something?”

“Undertaker, remember? Takes a lot to disturb me.” Enoch snapped, his patience wearing thin with the criticism as he latched onto the heart inside the pony and raised the other over his head. “I said I brought dead fings back didn’t I?”

Without any further comment he tightened his fingers and exhaled long and smoothly as a familiar tremor ran the entirety of his body and the heart above his head began to beat anew before the eyes of the others. This was partially new to him. He’d never raised a horse before, and though it was only a pony and shouldn’t have been much different to raising a human, Enoch had to force harder still to himself to keep his concentration.  
After several long moments of struggling, the heart still within the pony began to beat again. Enoch released the breath he’d been holding in a long hiss through his teeth and withdrew his hand.  
The long haired, grey body convulsed suddenly and before the gaping mouths of the others, the horse raised its head and let out a pained whinny.

Enoch smirked and sat back on his heels at his handiwork.

“Oh my bird…” Elizabeth whispered from behind him, “You really can.”

“Of course I can.” Enoch rolled his eyes and turned his head to raise a dark eyebrow at the others before addressing Nigel directly. “See? Ain’t so ‘orrible am I? You can talk to yer little friend again.”

Nigel was sitting back in the mud, staring open mouthed at the living horse and did not seem to register Enoch speaking at all until the other boy sighed and added, “Do it quick, mind. It only ‘as so long.”

Enoch tightened his grip on the heart beating in his palm and got to his feet, his clothes thoroughly coated in blood and mud as he squelched back towards the girls while Nigel crawled around to the horse’s head. The animal was trying to push itself to his hooves, whinnying and tossing its head and soaked mane panicked until Nigel rested his hands either side of its head and began to whisper to it.

“Get that thing away from me, that’s disgusting.” Elizabeth took several steps away as Enoch came closer and Cara behind her screwed up her face and held a hand over her mouth and nose in repulsion.

“Why is it disgustin’?” Enoch snapped, offended at their disgust and held the heart up as casually as if it were some toy, his fingers ever tight around the muscle. “You’ve got one ye know-”

“Teeth!”

They all stopped their bickering at once and turned to stare at Nigel who was looking over his shoulder at them, one arm around the pony’s neck as it struggled to lift itself.  
“Come again?” Cara chimed in, pulling her coat tighter about herself.

“That’s what she’s saying did it to them! Teeth and tongues like rope.”

“That’s a bloody weird tongue then.” Enoch muttered but then the heart in his hand lurched and began to slow. The colour began to drain away with the blood it pumped and suddenly the horse, which had just gotten weight onto its front hooves, whinnied and collapsed, blood gushing from the opening in its side.

Nigel groaned and cringed visibly as he tried in vain to support the creature that was already too far gone to save a second time. He cast a look over his shoulder, his face streaked with mud and water as he stared at Enoch with a look somewhere between pleading him to make it live again and disgust that he’d done it at all.

“Can’t do it. Only works once with each ‘art.” Enoch lifted the shrivelled grey thing in front of him and examined it briefly before throwing it aside into the mud.

“We need to go back. I don’t like this at all…” Cara’s Irish lilt spoke up decisively and everyone glanced at her and then at each other. No one wanted to argue. They were drenched, shivering, and left with an unpleasant experience that was unlikely to get any better the longer they stayed out.

They trudged back silently, Enoch well ahead of the others and pretending he didn’t feel the suddenly tense atmosphere that had come upon all of them. He couldn’t help his peculiarity, he hadn’t gotten to choose what he could do any more than Cecilia could help becoming metallic. He had years, possibly forever, to spend with these same people and he had no desire to spend it being judged for his peculiarity because it wasn’t all sunshine and roses like talking to animals.

No one spoke as they stumbled and slipped single file through the tunnel and even Nigel had sourly shrugged off Elizabeth’s elongated arm around his shoulders in his sulk. They staggered out, Enoch, Cara and then Elizabeth and Nigel close behind and all froze as they turned to face the now restored house.

“Bloody ‘ell…” Enoch and Nigel muttered in unison. The house, which they had left not even an hour ago in a state of peaceful slumber, was a light from a few windows and the front door flung open.

Miss Nightjar and Miss Thrush both stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the candle light behind them. They were both clad in dressing gowns and Miss Thrush wore boots as if she had been about to pursue them herself.

xxxXxxx

“What on earth you were _thinking_ running out like that, I’ll _never_ know! You scared us half to death finding you all missing!”

“And leaving the Loop without permission or notice-you should all know much better than that!”

The four truants were covered in towels and stood barefoot, so as not to drag mud in, in a line in the middle of the schoolroom, which doubled as Miss Nightjar’s study. Enoch rolled his eyes and averted holding those of anyone else. Elizabeth was wringing her hands together so furiously she had completely twisted her own wrists around. Both Nigel and Cara had their eyes fixed firmly on the wooden floor at their feet as all four took the chastisement of the two ymbrynes without much argument.

Miss Thrush was almost hysterical and fluttered restlessly around the room like the bird she took the form of, her voice rising in pitch as she berated them. Miss Nightjar was leaning up against one of the student desks and glaring at her wards with such intensity they could practically feel it.

“You could have been found out, you could have been killed!”

Elizabeth couldn’t keep her mouth shut and was unable to help interjecting, “It wasn’t dangerous! We’ve all been out there before, we didn’t go farther th-”

“Miss Langdon, that’s enough interrupting!” Miss Nightjar chastised and Elizabeth closed her mouth immediately and wrinkled her nose at the floor. “Sensible young peculiars, especially you four being the eldest in this house, should know much better than to sneak out, or leave the Loop without a word to anyone.”

“Well it’s not sneaking if we tol-”

“Mr. O’Connor, that is not going to make your situation any better, I can assure you.” Miss Thrush warned and Enoch sighed and shuffled his feet.

“What if you had been out there for too long? You might have aged forward-”

“Oooh, I’d be seventeen, how dangerous.” Enoch, not having learned to bridle his tongue in the last few seconds, interjected again and was only silenced by a glare from Miss Nightjar that could have pierced solid iron.

“And dare I ask why you and Mr. Adersee are covered in blood? It’s clearly not your own, thank heavens, it could have been far worse.”

Enoch cast a look down the line to Nigel who had finally lifted his head and squared his jaw, his attention now focused on a point just beyond Miss Thrush’s head. Before Enoch could be bothered to explain, Nigel spoke first.  
“Nothing, we just found a dead pony on the other side and Enoch…” Nigel stopped and pursed his lips again, unable to find the words to finish the sentence in a way that wouldn’t get them into more damage.

“-showed us his peculiarity.” Cara finished, “It was really nothing bad, Miss Nightjar…” She cast a blue eyed look over at Enoch who raised an eyebrow at her in surprise that she wasn’t acting like his peculiarity had been disgusting, and mouthed two words over to him which Enoch promptly pretended not to see. ‘I’m sorry.’

Miss Nightjar fixed them all in turn with a piercing look before turning her gaze to Enoch and arching a curved eyebrow at him. He just shrugged and held up his bloodied hands, palm out. The worst of it had washed off in the rain. “You know what I do…”

“We’ll discuss the gravity of your actions in the morning.” Miss Thrush spoke, her eyes flitting to each teenager in turn. “And a fitting duty for punishment I think…but for now, you’d best wash up and get to bed before you all catch cold.”

“Yes, Miss…” Four mumbled voices chanted together and, as one guilty, sodden unit, they filed from the room.

xxxXxxx

Time passed so smoothly inside the Loop that before Enoch knew it, a full year in the present had come and gone since he had arrived in the Loop. As he’d been told the previous summer, during one of the children’s excursions to the ocean, Enoch had to learn to swim from the other peculiars. He felt stupid and embarrassed having to learn, despite Miss Thrush’s assurances that most of the children had been in his position in their first few years of being in the Loop. The obvious exception was Oscar who, despite having grown up in the East side of London like Enoch, had been a natural swimmer complete with gills.

As it happened, learning to swim competently in the ocean was a slow process and one that Enoch did not immediately take to with any kind of enthusiasm. Though there was little that he did take to with enthusiasm. Oscar had laughed so rudely that after Enoch aimed a kick at him under water, which he easily evaded, the gilled Cockney had been sent back to the house by a screeching Miss Nightjar, who had accompanied them in bird form.

Despite prolonged company with people who were, more or less, his own age and for all intents and purposes supposed to be his adoptive family, Enoch’s best friends were still the clay figures he created and enlivened with tiny hearts.

Family.

It was a word he didn’t think about very often, at all, and when he did, it was not a thought he liked to dwell on for very long. Especially after the night of his sister’s birthday, in present time, passed.

 

Every sound seemed to be magnified. Every footstep he placed, no matter how gently he stepped, every creak of floorboards, and every breath he exhaled echoed back at him. He was in a hallway that he’d never seen before. It was grander than any building he’d even set foot in in his life with plush red running rugs that stretched the length of the hallway. Bronze framed portraits of people he’d never known and landscapes he’d never seen lined the expanse of the walls between tall sturdy doors either side. A standing, floor length mirror stood immediately to his left, its reflective surface coated in a thick layer of dust that obscured the reflection.

The boy raised one arm and wiped his sleeve over the glass, brushing away the coating of dust enough to see his face.  
The sixteen year old face of himself, Enoch Ambrose O’Connor, looked back at him, his dark ringed but bright blue eyes staring hard and Enoch’s shoulders slumped. What exactly had he been expecting from a mirror?  
He left it alone and took a few uncertain steps into the hallway towards the first door , there was no indication of what may be waiting on the other side and so Enoch turned the brass handle and pushed the door open.  He stepped into a plain, small room that he knew very well and did not seem to match the luxury of the hallway outside the door. A little bed was pushed up against one wall and upon it sat a young girl with blonde girls that framed her round, rosy face.

“Faith?” The name escaped his lips with such surprise and softness that Enoch almost didn’t recognise his own voice for a moment. But then the little girl turned her face to him and stared at him with eyes the same shade of blue they’d inherited from their mother. She smiled ad Enoch suddenly didn’t care at all how she was there, he just cared that she was.

“You came back!” She leapt to her feet, standing a little taller than he remembered but aside from that she hadn’t changed much at all.  
Then Enoch was on his knees and his little sister had thrown herself at him and nothing else mattered at the moment because he never let himself think about missing Faith and now he knew how much he had. She’d been the ray of sunshine in a bitter, grey London that, ever since he’d been a sour young teenager had actually made him smile.

“Father said you did bad fings. ‘e said you wouldn’t come back.”

Enoch’s face hardened over her little shoulder as he leaned back and held her at arm’s length. “I didn’ do nofin’ bad, but I can’t come back. ‘e wouldn’t ever ‘urt you, you’re perfectly normal, Faith.”

“What about you, Enoch? What are you?”

“Peculiar.”

Faith just stared at him and frowned, unable to understand what that word meant at all. She tossed her curls over her shoulder and scowled in such a good imitation of her brother that Enoch’s lips twitched in amusement. He wasn’t really here of course. He’d left that life behind but he’d never said goodbye to her. If he had, he might not have found the resolve to run.

Then, before either sibling could say another word, there was a tug on the back of Enoch’s collar and the room was moving. He sped backwards until the door slammed in his face and dissolved into an impenetrable expanse of flat wall.  
“Oi! No!” He was shouting now, and slamming his palm against the bare wall in vain. But she was gone and with a sigh he turned around to face the door on the opposite wall.

No sooner had he stepped through it the sound of birds and the crunch of twigs and leaves filled his ears. He was outside, in a place he knew almost as well as his former home. Enoch frowned and stepped forward only to be cut off by a heavy shouldered man whose feet dragged heavily along the ground. “Hey!”

If he’d been heard, the man, whose head and face were obscured by a dented old hat and high collar, gave no indication of it. He knelt down not far from Enoch, in front of a grave and Enoch, drawn by curiosity followed.

The man removed his hat to reveal a head of receding, greying hair and the profile of a skinny, worn face aged prematurely by labour and grief. It was his father. But if it was indeed Owen O’Connor, then…Enoch’s blue eyes followed his father’s tired ones to the marker and his blood seemed to run cold.  
It bore but a simple epitaph:

_Valentine O’Connor_

_Born Aug 15, 1862  
Died July 22, 1909_

_Loving mother, devoted wife._

Enoch’s feet were rooted to the ground they stood on, though he wanted to run back through the door behind him and slam it closed and never think about it again. Unlike his sister before, his father, it seemed could not see Enoch standing beside him as he lay down a few flowers on the dirty grave.

How long had it been? A month? A year or more? Whatever the case, there were more lines on Owen’s strangely sallow skin than Enoch had seen before.  
He was speaking now, quiet whispers that Enoch had to lean over and strain to overhear.

“I failed ye…I wasn’t there and now I don’t know ‘ow ta raise Faith on me own.” There was a few seconds of silence during which Enoch clenched his jaw and fist and tried in vain to rip his feet loose of the ground.  
“If that boy ‘adn’t been born a freak like that…yeh’d still be ‘ere and I wouldn’t ‘ave to know ‘ow...”

Enoch’s blood boiled and he stopped trying to pull himself away. His fists unfurled and clenched again as he felt another stab in his heart, “Piss off.” He ground out through his teeth, which went unheard to his father. Save for watching his mother die, twice, nothing had hurt more than the fear and hatred in the eyes of people he had once loved because he had to. His father had transformed from a mentor and a guardian, into a fearful, angry man unopposed to trying to beat the demon out of his own son.

“I’d rather be like I am than like you.” Enoch snapped aloud and before he could try again to wrench himself free from the waves of guilty that washed through his whole body, the scene dissolved and he was once again standing in the hall before a new door.

He didn’t want to see it. He wanted to wake up or run and escape whatever torment his mind was conjuring for itself. But Enoch couldn’t stop himself.  
The next room was much like the first. Only instead of the sparse furniture and candles, a weak electric light flickered on the wall and a dresser and mirror stood at one end of the room. The covers too were different on the bed, which was larger now. Pale flowered fabric instead of grey white sheets.

The door opened behind Enoch and he turned in surprise. He didn’t recognise the person who walked through it. She couldn’t have been more than twelve and wore a plain dress and a hat which she quickly removed to reveal blonde her tied back with a pink ribbon.

“Faith?” Enoch’s voice sounded strange to his own ears, the anger he had felt a moment ago had vanished into surprise and, unlike his father, she heard him.

She looked up but did not smile with the childlike glee he was accustomed to seeing on a five or six year old face. She studied him as if unsure what to make of her brother, who now only appeared five or so years older than her, rather than twelve, suddenly being there.  And yet, she did not seem surprised.

“It is me. Swear it.”

No sooner had he spoken the words aloud, he was pulled back past her staring face and into the hallway.  
This time there was no reprieve between. The door behind him on the other side of the hall flew open and Enoch stepped into an unfamiliar room. It was a sitting room, generously furnished with a rocking chair and a desk in one corner beside a large box covered in dials and shapes that was strange and unusual to anything he’d seen close before and out of which crackled voices.  
Even the colours, pastel greens and blues that were splattered through the room from the floors to the cushions, were nothing Enoch had been exposed to in a house.

“I knew you had to be dead.”

He whirled around, caught off guard by a voice behind him. A woman, whom he hadn’t noticed before, sat in the rocking chair with a book in her lap and a ring on her hand. She was in her late twenties, or early thirties from what Enoch could guess and wore her hair short and in curls that just framed her face and ended at her chin. If he hadn’t begun to sense a pattern, the only distinguishing feature that made her recognisable were the eyes the same shade as his.

 “Bloody ‘ell…” Was all Enoch was able to form as he stared, open mouthed at his sister, this woman who had to be her, in a strange year in a strange room.

“They never found you, I wanted to believe you were innocent for so long and when you never came back and I was old enough to understand, I knew you weren’t ever going to, Enoch.”

“I wanna wake up now.” He muttered more to himself than anything and clenched his eyes closed, willing for it all to disappear but when he opened them, it was all the same. “I ain’t dead, don’t say I am.”

“Then how haven’t you aged a day, _older_ brother?”

“You wouldn’t believe me.” Enoch said short and curt, through clenched teeth and a trembling jaw.

“I didn’t know back then why he chased you away, of course, I was a child. It was years later that I realised no one else could have made my toys dance and of course there was something…strange-”

“Peculiar.” Enoch corrected, with an air of defence he didn’t expect he had in him over the term.

“-that must have been why you never came back. If you aren’t long gone, Enoch…you’re not really here at all.”

“Neither are you.”

“Of course.” Her mouth curved into a smile and she nodded a slightly pointed chin at a photograph on the little table at her elbow. Inside was a picture of two children, a girl and a boy.  
“That’s James, and Valentine. You would be their uncle of course. But then…perhaps not…”

Enoch, whose head was starting to spin uncomfortably, frowned suddenly as he heard her.  
“Wh-” He snapped his eyes back to her and suddenly the blue of his sister’s eyes was gone. Instead, he stared into blank, milk white nothingness.

xxxXxxx

Enoch woke in a cold sweat.


	15. 3rd April 1901 (1911-1914)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't about to abandon this baby, I promise you that!  
> This chapter may be a little shorter than others but it felt better to leave it where I did. I've also decided to add the timeframe in the present alongside the Loop date in the titles, to add context and a little more variety.

“Enoch! Hey, wake up!”

Enoch woke suddenly in a cold sweat to someone shaking him by the shoulders. His skin was damp and sticky with sweat and he was trembling slightly as he shot upright in his own bed in his bedroom, in his own Loop. The room spun as he tried to get his bearings. Nigel was standing beside his bed, messy haired and in his nightclothes staring at Enoch like he’d never seen him before.

“You were shouting. ‘Faith’ and cursing and a whole bunch of…unintelligible stuff.”

“Was I?” The empty eyes and the bizarre, cold, and nightmarish nature of his dreams spun around in Enoch’s head and for a long second it was all he could do to regain control over his breathing. Then suddenly he snapped back to reality and he scowled, humiliated by the fact that he’d been caught out in a sleeping moment of weakness he was too proud to want to acknowledge.

Enoch clenched his jaw and tried to straighten his back, jerking his shoulder away and pursing his lips as he looked determinedly at the wall instead of his roommate.

“We’ve all had them.” Nigel spoke again, a comment to which Enoch paid no heed and just glared at the wall. His hands had curled into fists in the tangle of covers over his legs and a bead of sweat was threatening to run into his eye before he furiously wiped it away from the curls that stuck to his forehead.

The older boy sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair as he turned, muttering to himself, and crawled back into his bed on the other side of the room.

When he was satisfied that he couldn’t be seen, Enoch let out a long, slow breath and dropped backwards. His head hit the pillow with a soft thump and he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes adjusting to make out the shapes of the beams in the darkness. Unwilling to close his eyes and try to sleep again, he rolled onto his side, reached under the bed and pulled out one of his clay soldiers. Enoch pressed his thumb to the little chest and the homunculus sprung to life in his hand. He released it and it immediately began to explore the whole expanse of his bed, climbing over his ankle, with some difficulty, and scouting out the territory. Enoch had been in Miss Nightjar and Miss Thrush’s Loop for over a year now and it was still surreal at times like this to think about time passing as it always did for everyone but them.

The days passed and melted together so smoothly after a while that a whole month could pass before they knew it had. Someday, in the not too distant future, his own little sister would be older than he was, physically at least, someday she really would think he had died somewhere and never know the truth. Which she couldn’t. One day she would forget about the things he could do, about the dolls he made dance for her, about the little toy unlike anything the other kids had that made her laugh when she was sick. Enoch and his peculiarities would be nothing but a distant memory that any normal would assume had been exaggerated and made up in time because how could it have been real?

Then one day, everyone Enoch had ever known in his youth, his family, the good and the bad would all be dead and gone in some future time that Enoch would probably never see while he, and all the other peculiar children remained preserved in their youth for who knew how long, safe from the creatures that hunted them and from exposure to normals. A place that accepted him.

For the most part.

xxxXxxx

Over time, the stories of the other children began to come out. Though amongst each other most of them already knew the lives of the others, even the second or the third retelling did not seem old to them.

Victoria, whose parents had died when she was only an infant, had been raised in a children’s home until her telekinesis began to develop when she was six. Books and broken toys she wanted would suddenly fly towards her, and, out of her control, scant bowls of food would begin to tremble uncontrollably. They’d shut her up in a sparsely furnished room, afraid of what she would do for over a year until Miss Thrush had found her.

Oscar, as Cockney as Enoch, had grown up in the same end of London. He had been born with his gills, which unsurprisingly doctors had been unable to diagnose. Even on warm days he’d been forced into scarves and high collars and never allowed in public alone. He discovered he could breathe with them when he’d fallen into the river at twelve years old. His older brother, a dock worker, had watched as he slipped into the grimy depths and, Oscar said, had only watched with scorn and disgust on his face as Oscar slipped beneath the surface and did not come up again.

Cara had been an unusually quiet child, and from a young age had discovered she heard things no one else seemed to, quite by accident. It wasn’t until she was twelve years old that she had realised they were the thoughts of people around her. In telling her family, she had been met with derision and scorn. Unable to control it and silence the noise, she began to repeat it aloud as people thought it until her very Catholic family were convinced she was possessed. She, like Victoria and many other peculiars, was kept in solitude. When she was fifteen, and overheard the thoughts of her mother and father outside her locked bedroom door, who were planning to be rid of their demonic daughter, she fled through an upstairs window. Miss Nightjar had discovered her wandering Ireland alone at sixteen years old, and brought her to Wales where, under guidance and friendly company that she was not accustomed to, she learned to hone and control her peculiarity.

Whenever it came to Enoch’s turn to share, he would say nothing further than, “Ye should see their faces when the corpse just shoots up again.” And when pressed, albeit politely, for anything else, he would simply cross his arms, stare out the window and pretend he couldn’t feel Cara’s familiar strange, and irritatingly sympathetic stare on the back of his head.  He wasn’t alone in his silence. He’d never heard so much as a peep out of Cecilia or Nigel about their former lives outside of the Loop.

Few peculiars came from happy homes with cheerful stories to tell. But the progress of once broken and scared children without a clue what was happening to them, under the care and protection of an ymbryne was undeniable. Children who were once shunned, abused and isolated opened out of their shells and formed fast friends. Restraint over previously unfamiliar and uncontrollable gifts, telepathy and telekinesis alike, was taught, practiced and embraced.  The ymbrynes were mothers, teachers and guardians whose very presence created an atmosphere of safety and lazy contentment in everyday life that few had experienced before.

This odd assortment of peculiars in all shapes and sizes were the only family each of them had now, and the closest thing to friends Enoch had ever had at all. Friends. He supposed he had to call them that at least, after months and years began to pass.

Sometimes he would even join in a game of football or cricket, the likes of which Alexander never refrained from cheating in and almost always turned into a game of seeing who could trip him up. But despite sharing a room with Nigel, whose opinion of him rapidly seemed to lessen as time passed, and semi getting along with a few of the others, Enoch couldn’t say he was close with anyone. His peculiarity was confined to small things, using the hearts of creatures the likes of mice and birds, which he had to be sure not to kill anywhere within sight of Nigel or risk an extremely cold shoulder the likes of which he was more accustomed to giving than receiving. While Earnest stuck to anything he touched with bare fingers, Cara read minds and Victoria’s telekinesis was improving gradually, Enoch’s peculiarity was messy and gruesome and so very different from the others that he still greatly preferred the company of homunculi.   
He could have pretended it didn’t bother him, and it honestly hadn’t at first as this situation was still vastly preferable to the reality he’d lived before, but the irksome frustration grew over time. His very palms itched sometimes, buzzing with an energy they longed to expel into a heart larger than the tiny one of a seagull or the slightly larger one of a red kite. Enoch frequently found himself watching from a corner or across the yard at Victoria who, under Miss Nightjar or Thrush’s watch would juggle bottles in mid-air, or Eliza, stretching and bending her limbs to greater extents, and feel a pang of jealousy he wouldn’t admit. Not because he particularly liked the idea of being telekinetic, he didn’t think he’d give up his peculiarity for anything, but because they could practice. They could hone their skills and improve while he just repeated and repeated the same basic skills he’d mastered years ago.

It wasn’t fair.

With 1914, came an occurrence that lessened Enoch’s bitterness considerably, or at least distracted him from it. Outside the Loop, Britain was plunged into war. It wasn’t uncommon to see or hear planes streaking in formation through the skies on any brief excursions into the present.   
Enoch’s interest in soldiers and warfare had been roused many years ago when he was a child and heard tell of exploits in Africa and India. His homunculi were not mere dolls or playthings that he preferred the company of over other people, although he did, they were soldiers and he was their general.   
This war was not like others. It was not a British invasion or assistance in a strange, far away land but a war in which much of Europe, and indeed the world, had been thrown.  
Not for the first time, Enoch found himself thinking what it would have been like to be able to enlist himself. He would have been an unstoppable soldier, and, without a doubt he assured himself, would have been promoted quickly. But there wasn’t a point in dreaming those things anymore, the future of peculiar children in timeloops didn’t often entail a career.   
It didn’t particularly bother Enoch now, though. He was too interested in sticking his head out of the loop entrance in time to catch a fighter plane flying overhead, or spot a ship out at sea if he looked for long enough and strained his eyes. For once, he became a scholar of sorts where he’d never cared to learn more than he needed to. As a direct result of his sudden interest in all things military, Enoch’s literacy skills improved dramatically. That wasn’t to say he couldn’t have been an adept reader if he had tried, and by age twelve he had already had more education than either of his parents had. But the humiliation of being a young man of sixteen, and indeed older now save for physically, and having to go back to school under an ymbryne’s tutelage despite the considerably more enjoyable environment had pricked Enoch’s pride. But now he had found an interest, something aside from preservation formulas and dead bodies that immediately sparked his interest to learn more.

“What are you reading, Enoch?”

The boy sighed and turned his head a miniscule amount from where he’d been leaning on his elbows over a book at the dining room table. Victoria stood at his side, her head and shoulders only just peering over.

“Nothin’ you should bother wiv.”

“I’m just asking, don’t be mean.”

“That wasn’t mean.” Enoch ran a hand through his dark curls before dropping his elbows and lowering his forearms to the table. “I can show ya mean and ye’ll see.”

“Don’t be so grumpy all the time.” The little girl pouted and narrowed her eyes in concentration. The book twitched beneath Enoch’s outstretched hand and he sighed as it jerked out from beneath his hand and flipped up onto its end so Victoria could read the cover.  
Her brow furrowed ever so slightly and she tilted her head curiously at him. “Why are you reading about warships?”

“Never you mind.” Enoch replied and caught the book before it could topple backwards onto the wood of the table.

“I hate the war, I’m glad we’re away from it.”

To Enoch’s irritation, Victoria’s curiosity did not seem to be sated and she wasn’t leaving him alone. He sighed and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as he tried to go back to his book in peace. “Mmm.” He hummed noncommittally and furrowed his dark brown eyebrows ever so slightly.

“It’s nasty and loud outside now, I don’t know why you like the guns and ships so much.”

Here Enoch thought he’d been making himself clear about wanting to be left alone, or at least in quiet. He lifted his head and stared coolly at her.   
“Did I do somefin’ to you? Can you go away now?”

“Stop being mean!” Victoria’s eyes shone with water but she pursed his lips stubbornly and the chair to Enoch’s right wobbled menacingly. “Fine!”

Enoch just stared stoically at her retreating form as she ran from the room stubbornly, rolled his blue eyes and returned to his reading.

xxxXxxx

“Steady aim…” Enoch muttered to himself, keeping his eyes trained on his target, a grazing Welsh Black cow across the field. He lay flat on his stomach in the dirt and grass, the top two buttons of his shirt unfastened to free up movement in his shoulders just slightly. The long stick he was envisioning as a P1914 Enfield rifle pressed firmly below his deltoid muscle on his right shoulder as he looked over and through an imaginary sight. “Fire…” He made a soft _boom_ with his tongue to mimic the firing of a gun and sighed, propping himself up on his elbows and letting the stick fall to the ground. What he would have given for a cow heart and something to use it for.

“What are you doing?” Soft laughter behind him made Enoch swear suddenly and almost jump out of his skin. He had not been paying attention to anything around him save the cow, which had raised its head and looked over in slight interest at the noise, and his own imaginary warfare.

Enoch’s ghostly pale skin flushed with red suddenly as he rolled onto his side and looked over at the intruder.

Cara stood there, wearing a simple dress of robin egg blue cotton that ended just past her knees. Of all people who could have caught him in the act of pretending to live out a fantasy of being in the army, it would have been the mind reader with a social filter that was completely absent fifty percent of the time. Although, his own social skills, despite the four years of living in the loop, were almost certainly worse.

“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Enoch grumbled, pushing his chest out of the dirt and sitting up on his knees in the grass, half squinting up at her against the sunlight that was peering out behind a sea of grey clouds.

“I wouldn’t, I didn’t look.” Cara huffed, sounding the slightest bit offended at Enoch’s assumption, an air to which he responded only with a scoff and the raising of one eyebrow.

“Really?”

“Yes, really! I’m not always nosy, ya know?”

“I’m inclined to disagree.”

“Fine.” Cara’s Irish lilt rose slightly in pitch as she fixed Enoch with the focused stare he was so accustomed to seeing on her. “You asked for it then-”

“And you’re provin’ my point exactly-”

“Aren’t you a little old to be playing pretend soldier?”

Enoch pursed his lips stubbornly and looked away from her again, his face still holding the faintest hint of pink. “At least I don’t snoop.”

“No, you just lurk.”

Cara raised a red eyebrow and wrinkled her nose in an effort to keep from laughing at Enoch as he pushed himself up to his feet and dusted his trousers off. Enoch rolled his eyes, the blue irises still fixed behind her head as he determinedly did not look her in the face.   
“Do you _want_ somethin’? Either way, go away.”

Cara sighed and tugged at the hem of her dress to flatten it against the breeze that had swept up, blowing her hair back from her shoulders and sending Enoch’s loose bracers, which hung from his trousers, flapping softly against each leg.

“Miss Thrush asked me to fetch you for dinner, as a matter of fact and I’m sure the birds will be cross if you don’t come.”

“Fine, I’m coming.” Enoch straightened himself up, standing tall as the embarrassment of being caught playing soldier at his age began to ebb away. Without waiting for Cara to follow, he marched away passed her, his feet crunched the Moorish grass underfoot.

She ran a few paces to catch up with him but to Enoch’s immense relief didn’t try to coax him into a conversation as he had strongly suspected she might.

They walked along for a little over five minutes until the house came back into view, Enoch making a substantial effort to keep his thoughts as centred on warfare and animal hearts to ward off any invasive mind reading. To her credit, he had to admit, Cara’s invasiveness had greatly lessened the more years they spent in the loop.

They ate a handsome meal of roast beef and vegetables, prepared by the evening’s dinner roster which consisted of Earnest, Cecilia and Nigel, who stuck to preparing the vegetables and bread.

“How long do you think they’ll fight for, Miss Nightjar?” Darcy piped up from his seat at the end of the long dining table, and all heads at the table followed him to Miss Nightjar at the head.

“Yes, it’s rather nasty, I don’t like hearing airplanes out there.” Victoria chimed in, wrinkling her nose.   
“Then don’t go outside the Loop, stupid.” Oscar snorted before flinching under the glare Miss Thrush shot him.

“Don’t you call anyone that, Oscar, that’s enough.”

“I think it’s great.” Enoch muttered, spearing a roast carrot with his fork, popping it into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.

“Yes, you _would_. You wouldn’t care that people are dying.” Eliza rolled her eyes from her spot across from Enoch and beside Nigel. Enoch shot her a look before merely shrugging and pushing a potato around in some gravy.

“Well it doesn’t really affect us does it?”

“You’re such a-”

“That’s enough, everyone, what nonsense to be talking about at the dinner table.” Miss Nightjar chided, fixing each offending person with a hard stare that never failed to make them cringe and mutter apologies. “We needn’t worry about such things at all, that’s precisely the reason we’re safe here, children.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I just had the pleasure of finishing the “Peculiar Children” series, which I simply adored, and found myself strangely intrigued by Enoch. Though he’s not the most likeable character, I couldn’t help wondering what his story was, as we only ever find out that he was born to a family of undertakers. So as peculiar, and potentially morbid, as it may be…I decided to write it myself!


End file.
